Ellen Barron Family Centre (take 2) - Day 1

Merryn in the play room

After the two weeks from hell I was relieved and excited to be checking back into the Centre. My only concern was Connor, he has been having panic attacks if I leave him with anyone else.  I'd left him with his grandmother and my sister at her house in the hopes he would be fine with familiar people in a familiar environment.  My fears were realised about 20 minutes after we had checked in when my sister called to say he was hysterical and getting to the point he was going to vomit.  I suggested she try taking him home (I owe her a case of wine for all she did for me this week) and see if he would calm when in his own house.  A few hours later she rang to say it had worked.  So now it appears, if I want to leave him it can only be when he is at home and someone else comes and stays with him.

In the meantime Merryn and I were settling right in.  She went down for her morning sleep with not too much fuss (about 15 minutes of yelling) and I got all the usual 'admin' done with the nurses and unpacked.  Unfortunately I'd been up since 1:30am with Connor so what I really wanted to do was sleep while Merryn was sleeping.

After lunch we went to have a play in the play room until Mez started to show signs of being tired then I tried for her afternoon sleep.  I say tried, because it was a complete disaster (even with the nurse there assisting) as all of my attempts at getting her in for an afternoon sleep have been for a while now.

Andrew and Connor came up and saw us after dinner.  When Connor saw me he put his little hands together in front of his chest and he just quivered with excitement.  It was so adorable.  The kids had bath time together before Andrew and Connor went home.

I was very nervous about how the night was going to go but it pretty much went to plan.  The idea was to stop breastfeeding her to sleep all night (with the exception of a feed if she woke around 10pm) and of course no co-sleeping.  I had done ok trying to stick to the plan in the past two weeks so I was hoping we could work out the 'kinks'.  It took 15 minutes for Merryn to go down for the night (not surprising considering she'd been awake most of the day), she woke at 10:30pm for a breast feed and went straight back to sleep, and I was able to pat her to sleep quickly at 12:30am.  At 5am she woke and I figured it was the start to the day so I gave her a feed, but instead she went back to sleep and didn't wake until 8:15am!

It seemed like a very good start.