My friend Michelle ran 22 miles this morning. I know, it sounds crazy, but it is what you need to do for training two or three weeks before a marathon. She is running the Las Vegas marathon in two weeks. This is only the second marathon that I have not run with her. Unless, of course, you count Los Angeles, which she should not have run. That story is probably worth a digression.
Michelle trained for the Los Angeles marathon but hurt her Achilles tendon four weeks before the marathon. She was told that if she did not stop running it could snap and that it would feel like she had been shot in the back of her leg. She already had her plane tickets and hotel so she decided to go on the trip since a couple of our other friends were running the race. She also had her non-refundable marathon entry and for whatever reason at the last minute decided she would just run as far as she could and then take the shuttle that picks up runners unable to finish and take them back to the finish line.
Michelle’s Achilles tendon started to hurt somewhere between miles 10 and 12 and she abandoned the race. The people at the next aid station radioed a race coordinator and the next thing she knew, she had an ambulance trying to pick her up, although they did not believe she was Michelle King since she was not black. Then they figured that she must have married a “brother” but she set them straight that Caucasian people can have the last name King.
Once they worked through identity, she said that she did not need to go in an ambulance, but could they give her a ride back to the start. They said they were not allowed to do that. So, she waited and waited for the post-race sweeper van. It never came and a cop stopped to ask her what she was doing in “this”neighborhood as it was apparently not a good LA neighborhood to be hanging out in. She told him her story and said that she was trying to get back to the race start and could she get a ride. The cop said that he was not allowed to give her a ride, but that she needed to get out of that neighborhood immediately as it was not safe. It was about this time that a large black woman stopped and offered her a ride saying over and over that God had told her that she needed to help someone today.
Michelle was grateful for the ride but freaked out because she started to wonder if she was really a he due to some large men’s sneakers behind the car seat. She did finally meet up with our friends and made it out of the sketchy LA hood alive. Michelle told me this morning that when she emailed her race experience out to her friends and family, her grandma couldn’t continue reading because it was so scary. I really wish I could find that email because the way Michelle tells stories is hilarious!
Anyway, I bring all this up because I ran eight of Michelle’s 22 miles with her this morning. I met her at 6:30am after she had already ran six miles with another friend. When I left her eight miles and an hour and a half later (we had a couple of bio breaks), she still had eight miles to go. It is always a kick running with Michelle and her friend Amy who also joined us, but I was dragging today both because my hip has been hurting pretty bad since Tuesday and also because I was tired.
I was tired for a couple of reasons. The first was because of date night last night. Yes, Andy and I finally found the time and energy to leave our daughter for almost two hours and have a fantastic meal at The Bonefish Grillin downtown Boise. We stuffed ourselves with a FABULOUS meal complete with a tasty, unique shrimp appetizer, corn chowder with crab, sea bass entree and their TO-DIE-FOR chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream for dessert. We both regretted that we ate too much, but it was one of those meals when it is really worth it. With the meal, we shared a very nice bottle of wine (nice in flavor, not expensive) which is another side note worth exploring.
Andy heard a story on NPR yesterday about the 2005 Columbia Crest Cabernet Sauvignon wine. At only $27, the wine is the 2009 Wine Spectator wine of the year, 95 points on the Wine Spectator scale! This is a wine from our neighboring state of Washington, not France or Italy or even California, but Washington, U-S of A.
The Bonefish Grille had the 2006 version of this wine so we decided to order it and split the bottle. As far as taste goes, I could try and give you a snooty list of the black current, pepper and charcoal flavors I caught a hint of but I am really not good at articulating the flavors in wine. I can just tell you it tasted gooo-oood and very well blended and smooth.
It felt very decadent to drink an entire bottle of wine together and even though it was the 2006, it was an amazing wine. The pre-baby version of us would have found it to be commonplace to drink that much wine with a restaurant meal. The pre-baby version of me also would have laughed at the thought of two glasses of wine affecting me enough to disrupt my sleep thus affecting the eight miles of running with Michelle this morning. Yes, finally, this is how it all ties together. Oh and the other piece.
Between 3am and 4am, I woke up to Belén making her six-month old version of the ewok noises over the baby monitor, which really are starting to sound more like a baby version of singing. If it wasn’t 3 or 4am, it would sound cute, but as we can probably all agree, even from the cutest creature on this planet, nothing sounds cute at 3 or 4am. She does this almost every night and then sings herself back to sleep without parental intervention. Usually this just affects Andy’s sleep because the baby monitor sits on his nightstand and I am generally a VERY deep sleeper. But, last night, for whatever reason, the ewok singing woke me up and the leftover wine in my system caused me to be awake immediately. My old self would have laughed in the face of two glasses of wine!
Whenever a person is awakened that early in the morning s/he likely begins searching for the reason why s/he is awake in an attempt to ensure it never happens again. This is where I am at with the baby monitor. How long do you keep the thing in your room? Do you wait until the child is old enough to yell, “Mooooooooooom, Daaaaaaaaaaaaad!” or can you ditch it before then? Maybe if we didn’t have it, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all worrying that something is wrong with the babe. Actually that is quite likely because I STILL wake up and hit Andy and say, “When was the last time you heard her breathe?” He groggily replies almost on cue, “Sheeeees fiiiiiine honey!” and then goes back to sleep instantly.
But seriously, for those of you who have had kids and had a baby monitor, how long did you keep it? Inquiring minds want to know, I want to know.
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{ 6 comments }
I still keep my monitor on my nightstand, but I leave it off most of the time (T=14 months now). Since we now have a Leave-The-Baby-In-The-Crib-By-Himself-All-Night Rule (and I can’t quite remember when that started, but you’ll know when you make the rule at your house), we do what we can to prevent ourselves from hearing him cry if he does: monitor off, door shut, humidifier for white noise. Sometimes, my brain gets the better of me and begins to wonder if I hear him crying. At these times, to prevent myself from waking up any more than I have to, I turn on the monitor for a second to check. Sometimes, my extra-awake brain requires that I leave it on because: although I will wake up if he does peep (as we call it), I can comfortably assume that he’s not peeping if I can’t hear him, and thus have a better chance of going back to sleep. Or, when I have the luxury of trying to sleep until he wakes up (at an allowable time) in the morning, I’ll turn it on in the early morning if my brain is showing signs of trying to not sleep too deeply for fear of leaving him to cry way past his normal wake-up time.
It helped greatly when we formally made the rule to let him cry until 6am without intervention, if that’s what he decided to do. (Not that he does this.) But having made the decision together during conscious hours meant that my decision tree in the wee hours of the night was simpler. Baby quiet: try to sleep. Baby crying: put in earplugs* from nightstand drawer and try to sleep. No more waking myself all the way up wondering if I should go in there or not. (*Okay, okay… only one earplug. I sleep on my non-earplug side so I can check on the crying status by just lifting my head off the pillow rather than pulling out and then having to re-insert the earplug if my curiosity is keeping me awake.)
Bottom line #1: I use my baby monitor only when it will help me sleep better to have it on, backwards as that sounds.
Bottom line #2: I feel your pain! Not sleeping during sleeping time is SO infuriating. It has gotten easier to deal with my mom brain over time, and I’m hoping for continued improvement! And remind yourself: avoid keeping your marble collection in the crib or letting the neighbor’s pit bull sleep in the nursery and Belen’s bed will be a pretty dang safe place for her to spend those unattended hours.
)
Thank you for the very thorough, excellent advice (as you are always able to provide!) The funny thing is that we very very seldomly go into the nursery at night if we do hear her peeping (using your word
) as she mostly goes back to sleep, unless there is something really wrong, usually hunger because she went to bed without getting enough to eat because she was too tired. The monitor seems to be most needed when first putting her down at night or for naps. If you think of when you started the Leave-The-Baby-In-The-Crib-By-Himself-All-Night Rule, I would be interested to know that.
Thanks again Laura!
Ok, I am the first to admit that I might be a slightly over-protective mom but we still have a monitor and our kids are 5 and 3. But just to make myself feel better, our bedroom is on a different level than our children’s rooms. Maybe that makes it ok?! I find so much comfort in being able to hear what is going on, even their cute little sleep breaths.
On a side note, one of our twins was negatively effected by Halloween this year. All of the scary stuff took root for the first time and she is afraid of the dark now. So the monitor also helps her a lot because she knows that I can hear her in her room. She even has me go to her room and talk to her in the monitor while she sits in our room – just to make sure it is working.
I can’t answer your baby monitor question, but I can say that if I have 2+ glasses of wine too close to each other as well as too close to bedtime, I sleep absolutely terrible. If I end up waking up, I might as well stay up.
Not sure what the deal is.
i get the bad parent award…we’ve never used a monitor. i guess my reasoning for that is that if they are making some kind of quiet noise that would be amplified by the monitor and wake me up, i don’t really need to be aware of it. if the babe is crying loudly – either russell or i will wake up (we’ve always lived in very small houses) and can determine what kind of cry it is and whether it requires us to drag ourselves out of bed. after three months we figure they are developed enough to not be hungry so we just let them cry it out. so far, it’s worked like a charm for all three kids. the first night or two really suck because they cry. a lot. but after that they sleep like logs. it’s such a beautiful thing.
We enacted the let-cry rule when Dr. B said it was okay. My notes indicate she started encouraging that at six months. You can always check in with the triage nurse via phone, she’s typically nice and patient about those sorts of questions.
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