Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Baby Bootcamp, The Countdown

The time is drawing near where Henry has to be left with a babysitter. We have three weddings to attend and I need to finally bite the bullet. I am embarrassed to admit that the longest I have left him thus far is two hours. Once. And that was with Adam. His father. And I just about had heart failure the entire time.

Anyway, confession time over. I would guess it is no surprise that a breastfeeding, cosleeping baby that has never been away from his mama in 7 months is a little bit of a mama-addict. Couple this with normal seven month old separation anxiety and we have a HUGE problem. Poor Grandpa Joe makes the trek in to visit him every week without fail and Henry still cries whenever I leave the room. I have tried my darndest to get him used to other people; I have joined two play groups, gym class, music class, and practically foist him into the neighbors' arms.

We tried a practice babysitting run last night with my brother. Kevin is a great dad of three little girls. He couldn't get Henry to sleep without a lot of screaming. Then, I took one of his girls to get ice cream and Henry woke up while I was gone. Henry was crying his little eyes out and it took me about 15 minutes to get him to breathe normally.

So, I have declared the next 18 days Baby Bootcamp. I have this much time to get Henry ready for his first babysitter (poor Kevin and Julie unless they bail after last night's debacle). We need to break all of our bad habits before then that are contributing to the problem. So, in order to be accountable, I will list them here:

1) Pacifer addiction
2) Napping in our bed sometimes
3) Me laying down with him to get him to sleep sometimes
4) Sleeping in our bed after 11pm each night
5) Adam never putting him to bed or down for naps
6) Henry not knowing how to drink from a bottle
7) Not having a firm nap, bedtime, waking schedule
8) Not sticking to a firm mealtime schedule

Yikes! We are in trouble!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You will be suprised how quickly you can break him of what you consider "bad habits" - the problem may be in breaking YOU of these habits. Don't be too hard on yourself, you are a wonderful Mother and you have done everything out of love for Henry. He will be just fine.
CJ

Vanessa said...

Oh, you hit that on the head! The bad habits are much more mine than his!

Anonymous said...

Again, don't beat yourself up .....you are a wonderful Mother and are just trying to nuture him. He is progressing far beyond others his age.
CJ

Anonymous said...

Yes you have been a little over protective, but not really a bad thing. Its not really his bad habits its your bad habits. You will just have to be really strong and after a few days it should be better. You better do the bottle first before Kevin and Julie watch him, or he will be very hungry. I want to be able to feed him when you come down to Florida in a few weeks. Just hand him a bottle and see if he will drink it, he does the cup.

Mom/ Grandma

Vanessa said...

Overprotective? Me?