This child is a stubborn mule already. She woke up at 7 p.m. last night. Then decided that she didn't want to go back to sleep until about 11 p.m. That would not be so bad but the thing is, she WILL fall asleep in your arms but as soon as you put her down in the bassinet, BOOM. Wide awake. So you do this about 5 times and it gets more and more fruststrating.

She isn't in pain so what the hell is the deal???

I did an experiment this morning. She woke up at about 7:15 a.m. Fell back asleep at about 8:30 and I decided to put her in the bassinet so I could try and get a few more hours of sleep. She was in the thing about 15 minutes, just long enough for me to get really comfortable and almost asleep and she woke up.

I took her back out to the living room and she ate about an oz of formula and fell back asleep. I put her back in the bassinet. Not even 5 minutes later she was back up.

Okay Erica. Let's try this.

She fell asleep again, I put her in her CRIB in her own room. That lasted about 20 minutes. I got her up and held her, fed her some more formula and she fell back asleep. I lay her down on the couch and she's been there sleeping for an hour now. She'll lay there and sleep all damn day. She's been doing that.

As for the continuous waking up and taking a bit more formula at that time, I think I have a darn grazer. Eat a bit here.....eat a bit there....

shit.

So I pulled the bassinet out here to the living room and am getting ready to move her to that and see what happens.

In the meantime.

I start taking Birth Control Pills again this Sunday. I've got mixed feelings about this. The only bad thing I see about it is that I get even bitchier than usual. I hate subjecting Stuart and the kids to that. But the pros outweigh the cons by far. So December 6th I go back on them.

December 9th is Erica's first Doctors appt.

I pulled out my handy dandy book 'What to Expect When You're Expecting' by Arlene Eisenburg, Heidi E. Murkoff, and Sandee E. Hathaway B.S.N. to check out the Postpartum section.

Physically this is what you are told to expect:

*Continued vaginal discharge (which is technically called lochia), the first few days bright red tapering off to a pinkish then brownish, then yellowish-white. yummy. Make me feel like a diva already.

*Fatigue. Well no shit.

*Some pain, discomfort and numbness in the perineum ( area between vaginal opening and anal opening) if you had a vaginal delivery. Sore but nothing like it could be if I had an episiotomy. That is where they cut you for one of those lovely things.

*Continued constipation even though this should be easing up. I draw the line at discussing my elimination process.

*Gradual flattening of your abdomen as the uterus recedes into the pelvis. Please hurry!

*Gradual loss of weight. Using the very suspect scale we have I am now at 157. Not very much of a loss though I'm sure it wasn't helped by Thanksgiving and the leftovers. :)

*Achiness in arms and neck from carrying the baby. I thought it was just from sleeping on my neck wrong or something. Who would of thunk it?

*Hair loss. Not a lot yet but it's not behaving as nicely as it was while pregnant.

Emotionally you go from Elation to depression or have one or the other. I'm sure not Elated at this point. I don't think I'm too far into any depression though either. At least not yet.

Decreased or increased sexual desire. Increase! Increase! Increase! 6 weeks seems like forever!

So by the book, that's where I'm at.

About 30 minutes after I put her in the bassinet: She's still sleeping. I really am NOT sleeping in this living room for the next month. I am NOT. So the next experiment is to turn on the television in the bedroom and see if it's the noise she misses.