I found this, as a letter to some on line friends in some of my old word documents. I really think this will be good to have here. Some times, Jaxon is going to hear things I have said or things that I have felt in the past. And perhaps getting to read the actual story of what it felt like to go through all of this with him will help him see, it’s not his fault. Or mine.

So here’s my story, from me…not through SMS which can be a bit hard to get all detail into. This might get long, but you expect that from me.

When I first broke down, everyone kept telling me I should go to this place called Riverton. They said it would help me, that doctors and pediatricians would “sort out JJ’s problems.” I was under the impression that they would actually solve the problem, or try to anyway.

So we show up at Riverton. It’s a wonderful and beautiful place. It’s not a hospital, although there are nurses there 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Picture it more like a 3 star hotel. I had my own bedroom and bathroom, JJ had a room with a cot in it off mine. There are three lounge rooms, a huge kitchen for everyone and amazing court yards outside your room. They have play rooms for the kiddies as well as an outdoor play area with sand pit and swing’s etc. There are twenty other rooms, each the same as mine, each with a struggling family in it. You get assigned your own nurse each shift, 3 for each day. The facility is brand new although they had been in their old building for more than 25 years. It had only been open for two weeks when I got there and they had spent 10 million on it so you can imagine it had the best of everything.

When we first got there and filed through mountains of paper work, we got taken to our room. Our nurse came in and asked hundred’s of questions…including “what do you hope to get from your stay here?” We answered we needed help with feeding and sleep. And if the crying should happen to start up at any point, I’d need coping strategies to deal with it and not just have a nervous breakdown again.

We spoke about my stay in hospital, which also helped us to find the first problem. The nurses in hospital had nursed Jaxon to sleep for the entire stay. While he wasn’t sleeping before we went in there, he did start to for them. But really, only because when each nurse got tired they had 10 other nurses to hand him off to. But when I got home for that short time when Maddy died I couldn’t do it. He would ONLY sleep if he was being held and if I put him down he would wake within 5 minutes. So the nurse told us about “sleep associations” This means that JJ had come to associate being nursed with sleeping and that without being nursed, he wouldn’t KNOW how to sleep alone. So that was our first task. We had to break his old habit and form new sleep associations. It took about a day to change his associations. Now when he goes to sleep I take him to his cot, wrap him up, put his dummy in, stroke his forehead for a minute and then walk out and turn the lights off. For the first day he cried like you wouldn’t believe. But the nurse stayed with us and told us when to go in and when to leave him be and see what he was going to do. Sometimes he was just making fussy noises; if we left him he would fall asleep. Sometimes he would be wailing and she would make us go in, comfort him and leave when he settled. After that initial day, once Jaxon learnt what the “sleep routine” was…I would put him down awake and leave the room and he wouldn’t make a sound. He would just nod off to sleep…AND stay asleep until his next feed.

The next issue we found was that I was keeping him awake too long. I thought he was meant to feed and THEN have 1.5 hours or so to play and be merry. But in fact, they told me…he is meant to feed AND play all in about 1.5 hours. At about 1 hour I should start looking for his tired signs and put him down as soon as I see them. So we worked on that and since then Jaxon barely cries at all. Before we went there Jaxon wasn’t sleeping at all during the day and was crying most of the day until about 11pm. If I complained to Mum that I couldn’t get anything done or that *I* couldn’t sleep she would say “Some babies just don’t sleep. You’ll have to deal with it” but the nurses said that’s not true. You CAN expect babies to sleep, that’s when they do the most growing and they need it just as much as a good feed.

Then came sorting out his feeding. We were only meant to stay for one week. And by Wednesday all of our problems had been solved. Jaxon wasn’t crying, was happily going down for a 2.5 hour nap without complaining or needing to be held and I was starting to feel confident that going home was going to be ok. He had eaten like a champ on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Come Thursday though he stopped eating. Well not stopped eating, but he would get to 50 mil (60 mil is 2 oz) and then he would start crying and kicking and screaming. I lost my confidence. I was SO SO MAD at him for being a little angel for those first few days and then becoming his normal difficult self just a day before I had to go home. I was angry that I had had three days to GET help with feeding but didn’t need it, and then when I was just a day from having to go home and wouldn’t have help he started up again. So I asked to stay another week. They saw my anger and frustration, and after having thoughts about drowning Jaxon they didn’t want to send me home feeling like that. Well, I am home now and I guess his “fussy” feeding hasn’t been helped. But they did give me some good tips on how to get him to take more (give him 45 minutes to eat, stop mid way to re-heat the bottle change his nappy and have a 5 minute break. If at the end of 45 minutes he has only had so much but not enough then I’ve tried my best and that’s all I can do) and how to remain calm while he is going off his head.

As for the constant crying we dealt with. Obviously unless they saw it they couldn’t give us answers. And Jaxon only cried that inconsolable cry for 6 hours once. So our theory is that he was getting to 75 mil in a feed and then starting to fuss the way he does now and we would say “he’s had enough” and stop feeding him. But he needed to be eating more (about 150 mil) so he was always hungry. Because he was always hungry he couldn’t sleep well. A big vicious cycle that we had started without knowing it. We do need to find out why he gets to that magical 75 mil and starts getting upset.

They held classes every day about feeding, settling and sleep patterns (a babies sleep cycle is only 20 minutes, and they haven’t learnt to “roll over and go back to sleep” like we have. So when they wake up 20-30 minutes after you’ve put them down leave them and let them learn how to put themselves back to sleep…unless they full out cry for you to help them) dealing with stress, supporting your partner, play groups, nutrition, baby massage, dealing with changes after a baby, relaxation and all sorts of other classes. Although Jaxon was always asleep for the set play group times, I got to go along and watch how other mother’s interacted with their babies (since I’m a bit of a dud when it comes to that!)

So Riverton turned out to be nothing like I was expecting. But I also left there with MUCH more than I expected to leave with. Jaxon has his feeds at 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm and 10pm. And he has a 2.5 hour nap between each feed and sleeps all night. I have so much time now it’s funny I sit here and wonder what to do next. Mostly I sleep, but housework gets a look in too! Feeding is really difficult and tiring, and Tim can’t do it because you need to stay calm and it is really frustrating when he wont eat. But we bargained that he does some housework while I do feeding so that when I am done with that I don’t have to worry about dishes or washing. I also got to meet other parents struggling. There were two lot’s of twins there the first week getting help to put them on different schedules so Mum’s didn’t have TWO crying babies at the same time. Other Mum’s who had always breast fed their babies to sleep and wanted to stop doing that but the child (two year olds some of them) wouldn’t “let” her. It was really funny once I’d spent the first week there to see the next lot of mother’s coming in all tired and weary and knowing that when they left their problems would be on the way to being solved.

I am so happy now that Jaxon is on a feeding and sleep schedule. He doesn’t cry anymore, and if he does it’s usually because he’s ready for a nap. Of course he’s still being a lil rat when it comes to feeding. We have an appointment with the paediatrician in three weeks. We have to get a referral to the physio to look at his right arm, and we’ll talk about other tests to find out what’s going on during feeds. Tomorrow we go to Brisbane to get his tenotomy done I think (I hope not, he’ll be in a cast for three weeks ) Oh and Dad gets here tomorrow night too….oh what FUN :S