Mia's doctor's appointment was on Wednesday, and we've had her on a very low dose of Zantac since the evening after, once I received and filled her prescription. I've had a difficult time determining just how much it's helping with her comfort level, as she's still got a huge problem with gas that it can't (and isn't designed to) touch. However, she's been waking up far less congested in the morning, so it appears that one battle with the reflux is being won, at any rate.
As far as her gas troubles go, I'm going to go ahead and blame her tremendous fussiness today on those. Interestingly, today is the day that I ran out of Tummy Calm and gave her Colic Calm instead, though she spit out about 80% of her morning dose, so perhaps she was just suffering from the resulting lack. I can attest that once she got the second dose, she finally worked out all the stuff her gut has been trying to dispose of all day, and was much the better for it. After seeing her schedule change in the past couple of weeks (to her great detriment) from 3-4 excavations a day down to one every 24-36 hours, it seemed quite a feat for her to manage three separate daiperfuls over course of the day. Sadly, she didn't really experience any relief until after the very last one.
Thus it was that we found ourselves in quite a state by 3:00 in the afternoon. She'd been awake since lunch, unable to get comfortable and sleep, even as I held her. Finally, I decided that perhaps her ever-increasing alertness was now causing her to be bothered by being in the basement playroom, where light and noise abounded, so I brought her up to our bedroom. I had two choices: get in the bed with her and be virtually assured of an easily-achieved nap, but be trapped there with her until its completion, or try to put her down in the mini-crib for the first time in over a month and likely fail in the attempt. The sleeper was not really an option because the only monitor I have for Mia is motion-activated, and it's in the mini-crib. I didn't want to leave her in the bedroom alone without a monitor on.
Perhaps it was simply due to her ridiculous level of exhaustion, but she fell asleep rather quickly and easily once laid on her tummy. I did try to put her down on her back first, but met with supreme outrage, even as I tried to nurse her into submission while standing over the crib. She would not accept my offering. Having been through this with Michael before her, I've come to accept that some babies (especially ones with tummy issues) simply need to be on their stomachs to sleep on flat surfaces. That doesn't mean it doesn't terrify me, despite my fancy monitoring system, however, at some point I feel that I've just gotta do what I gotta do.
As I closed the door behind me and ran into my absolutely astonished husband in the hall, I admitted that I had no idea how I'd succeeded in my attempt, and had no expectation that it would buy me any more than perhaps 30 minutes.
In the end, it bought me almost two hours.
Of course, those two hours went wasted because Abby woke just as as I left my bedroom, and Michael woke when I went upstairs to get Abby. Though I could reasonably have found plenty of useful things to do in the playroom with them, like folding laundry or picking up toys, I quickly gave into my own tendencies towards laziness. At the time, I reasoned that Mia would be up at any minute anyway, and that it wouldn't be worth the hassle I'd be facing when vacating my usual position on the loveseat would grant Michael access to all kinds of forbidden things on the shelves that lie to the right of that normally closely-guarded spot. The truth is, I probably could have gotten quite a bit of laundry folded (and subsequently unfolded by my less-than helpful companions) while staying put.
I tried to make myself feel better about my shameful lapse in usefulness when presented with such a supreme opportunity by placing hope in the possibility that Mia might sleep in the crib tonight, perhaps for a record-long session.
Yeah, it was not to be.
Tom and I both tried it, to no avail. She wouldn't settle for me, even on her tummy, and though Tom got her down asleep, she woke within ten minutes, and was not amused to find herself there.
What a tease.
At least she's dozing peacefully in her sleeper now. Maybe she'll make it to 2:00 am like she did last night.
Or not. She's very good at dangling carrots of hope, that one. As if I don't spend the majority of my days on my toes, as it is...
