Monday, June 16, 2008

Question of the Week - Area of Obsession

Am I obsessed with my child's sleep (or lack there of)? Sometimes I feel like I am. Did she take a nap? How long? Did she wake up at all and move around? Will she go to bed at night easily or will it be a struggle? Will she stay asleep? When will she start sleeping through the night again?

I'm happy to say (and I'm sure jinx myself) that she has slept through the night the last 5 nights. And now that she is down to one nap a day, she is averaging a two-hour nap. Woooo Hoooo!!! Maybe I can obesses a little less now about her sleep.

Do you know how many posts I've written that relate to the Pumpkin's sleeping? I checked my tags, and there are 63 tagged with "sleep" out of 190. That is a third of the posts I've written! The only tag with more posts related to it is the Pumpkin herself!

Clearly I'm obsessed. I talk about her fidgeting and her fussiness. I write about cute things she's done, how beautiful she is and now much I love her. I've even said a few things about her eating. But I go on and on about her sleep and my sleep and Londo's sleep, especially how awful the sleep regressions are. Aren't you all sick of it yet?

But wait, you all must have your own areas of obsession. I know that I'm not unique in this. So the question of the week is...

What do you obsess about?

If you have children, is it their eating or their development in a certain area? If you don't have kids, certainly you obsess about something else. What is it?

16 comments:

La folle maman said...

Sleep is a big one with us as well. But usually MY sleep is the issue as Monkey is doing okay in the sleep department, not fantastic but okay (see second obsession below). He'll sleep until 5:30-6 now. A few months ago he slept until 7:00 which I miss sorely.

The reason we obsess with my sleep is because no matter how tired I am, I cannot fall asleep easily. DH is out in 2-5 minutes and I lie awake for 1-3 hours trying. I've tried going to bed later so I'd be REALLY tired in theory, nope. No matter what time I go to bed, it's always at least an hour before I fall asleep. It's made me not such the nice La Folle somedays and DH even said I needed to go to the doctor to figure it out. That's something I plan on doing sometime between all of Monkey's doctor visits which brings me to our next obsession. His reflux.

Monkey has dealt with GERD pretty much since birth. But it's become worse recently. For the past month and a half we thought he had a cold and while he did have an ear infection at one point, we're now thinking all of the coughing he was doing and is STILL doing especially at night and after naps is from the reflux. I'm thinking about getting a second opinion on what to do as someone recently told me really bad reflux can lead to asthma.

Sorry, that was a lot but these are the two things I obsess about constantly.

I'm Not Skippy said...

Sex. Or lack there of.

Hey, I may be a dad, but I'm still a guy.

It's awful. And my obsessing makes it more elusive (by pissing off my partner) which makes my obsession worse. I don't post about it on my blog because of the friend and family who go there, but yeah it's almost all I think about.

It sucks having a hot wife you can't have.

Wineplz said...

I'm a spaz about my kids' sleep...because if they don't get adequate sleep, it will be a rough evening and all night we will hear them fussing in their sleep. So you're not alone with the sleep obsession.
I obsess about nearly everything with my kids...but besides sleep, I mostly obsess about Cooper's poop (color/consistancy/frequency), Gavin's speech issues (this one causes a lot of angst and loss of sleep for me).

caramama said...

I'm Not Skippy - I don't know if this will help, but I did write a post about ways to help get in the mood (for women), and there are definitely ways to help as the partner. Londo and I were just discussing how not in the mood I had been for quite a long time (pregnancy and after). But things really did get a lot better, especially recently. Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Eating is my obession with Dorothy. How much has she eaten, has she eaten enough, am I feeding her the right foods, will her health be permanently destroyed if she eats a hotdog or drinks juice. I feel it all relates to two things, 1) her dairy allergy and 2) my family's apparent obession with weight. Being a dairy lover, it has been challenging cooking and planning her meals while trying to decipher food labels and adjusting recipes. The weight issue really showed itself when my mother got on my case about Dorothy being too chubby at 6-MONTHS. Yes, six-months. So definitely eating, followed by social development and then sleep...oh...and whether I should wean her from breastfeeding...and...and...and...

Anonymous said...

The cause of my obsession is not sleep related luckily. It's my little one's weight. She is 17 months old and weighs around 20 lbs and that's if I'm lucky ( tomorrow doctor's visit to confirm) She is trully an unadventurous eater, but I have to admit that in the last week or so (now that the 75 week fussy period is behind us)she has been more interested in eating and easier to feed and so less refusal than usual.

And did someone mention sex? Oh, yeah, that's a close second.

OneTiredEma said...

I have the same issue as la folle maman. No matter how tired I am I have terrible trouble falling asleep--but of course you cannot use that as an excuse for not functioning because it's not connected to a baby (who eventually will sleep, as a preschooler, trust me!) or a virus or whatever. So yesterday morning, despite not really sleeping until 4 am, I got up at 6:30 to go to the gym. Sigh.

Anyway, I have been an insomniac forever, but I really feel like insomnia plus baby interruptions (going on 4 yrs now) are making me start to lose my mind. Or at least my memory. (Oh and makes my sex drive less than zero, as a nice side benefit.)

Hmm. Obsessions. Poop. Why AM's poop hasn't gotten to be solid toddler poop.

For my preschooler, what's going on in her classroom. How teachers deal with her. Is she bored? Who does she play with? What does she do? What are the other kids doing? Why is it the last week of school and she still objects to being left 2 days out of 5? What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall in there to see the kids interact!

Rudyinparis said...

When I thought about it, I realized that my obssession is concerned with whether the inevitable screw-upedness my kids will display will be my fault or something that just naturally happened on its own, or at least, without my help. For example--if they have problems when they're teenages, will it be my fault, or just human nature? I peer at Eldest when she's whiny or unpleasant and think: is she like that because I yelled at her in anger that night she woke me up out of a deep sleep? Or would she be like that anyway? I also obsess that once they've grown up and moved out that I'll be grief stricken that I didn't treasure Every Single Moment I was with them. Just yesterday I was trying to read a magazine on the front steps as they played and Eldest kept trying to engage me, but for Pete's sake, I just wanted to read a magazine, so I only absentminedly responded. When I'm on my death bed, will that break my heart?

Cloud said...

I'm with MommyEm... I obsess about Pumpkin's eating, probably because she is so extremely picky and it just seems wrong to send a chicken nugget or mac and cheese to day care every single day!

@I'm not Skippy: having been in your wife's shoes, my advice is that you'll get more action if sometimes when you approach her it is NOT for action. So snuggle up and expect nothing more than snuggles. I know this is hard, because no matter how many times I explain to my Hubby that this will work best he keeps forgetting and then I get grumpy and then no one is happy. I feel bad about it, but guilt isn't exactly a turn on, either. It is tough. Keep talking about it, too, and really listen to what your wife suggests. For me, if Hubby waits until we're in bed to try to make a move, he's probably out of luck, because at that point we're cutting into my sleep time (and with Pumpkin still not sleeping through the night, sleep is the most precious thing to me). If one of us makes a move earlier in the evening, then I'm much more interested. Good luck, and if it is any consolation, your wife is probably frustrated by her newly remodeled libido, too!

Anonymous said...

Gavin's Speech issues are definitely putting some heavy stress. I can only hope we'll start seeing some improvements soon.

Becoming Mommy said...

I actually have a few obsessions:
-Is Sasha getting enough to eat? I don't know why I continue with this, but it's been my obsession since he was born. The kid is a Hoover with a hollow leg, but still I obsess that I must be starving him.

-KerryGirl and her health. Always room for improvement there.

-the Hound and what the heck is she doing??? It's not like I'm going to discover she's doing volunteer work or anything so when I haven't seen her in a few minutes, I am always compelled to look for her. And it almost always turns out to be a good thing I did.

sheSaidC2 said...

I obsess easily, over many things. For our wedding I obsessed over color... the color of paper, if that color was close enough.. PUKE.
But with the babe there is SO MUCH to obsess over.
In the begining it was if I was doing enough, and then PUKE, and SLEEP. The two biggies for me are sleep and food. I am just tired of hearing myself talk about it, think about it, mention it. But hey did you hear? my baby WONT EAT! :)

Anonymous said...

I don't write about it much, but my big obsession is Mimi's eating. Because of her allergies, I want her to stay away from unfamiliar foods because they may contain dairy. At the same time I want her to be an adventurous eater and try lots of different things, but only those that we have checked and verified to be non-dairy. Finding a balance that gives her a healthy diet and not too picky drives me up the wall most days.

- Dana said...

Ya, I'm kinda obsessed about feeding our little girl. I'm just trying to make sure she gets lots of variety and good wholesome food. I probably spend alot of my time thinking about it. In July I have to start making her lunch for school...that will be fun! I could have spent $60/mo for a hot lunch but, it drives me crazy that they feed them chicken nuggets. She's been eating the food 3 days a week at her current place and I just have sucked it up and let it happen. Ewwww corn dogs, gross!

I have a similar obsession with her using cloth diapers. Since daycare I've had to suck-it-up and relax about that too. At least we got almost a full year in and we still can use cloth in the non-daycare times of the day. Plus I'm hoping she'll start transitioning out of them soon.

I'm Not Skippy said...

I've tried all of that. . . non-sexual touching, sweet gestures, etc. As far as thinking of the ways I've helped. I'm the cook, the one who cleans, and normally the responsible party for most things.

I'm trying not to bitch too much about it. The more I bitch about it the worse it gets. The worse it gets the more upset I get. . . I worry where it might lead.

I'm doing what I can.

Anonymous said...

Oh my obsessions change. The most ridiculous probably is during the winter when I obsess over what to put on Boog for PJs. At some point I actually had a formula for temperature and corresponding required layers. Which I would then question and as my husband's opinion in which he would respond, I don't know, you're crazy. Yeah, it was bad.

It could be worse though, you could be obsessing about poop.

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