The Trixie Update

You’ve heard the screeching (if not, take a listen). Now it’s your turn to decide what Trixie sounds like: Vote in the latest Trixie poll!

 
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$php_poll->set_template_set(”plain”);
$php_poll->set_max_bar_length(125);
$php_poll->set_max_bar_height(10);
echo $php_poll->poll_process(10);
?>

 

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All the phonetic sound clusters are gone. As are the cooing and soft noises. All Trixie does now is screech. And sometimes squeak. Somewhat unbelievably these are the noises she makes when happy. If she’s upset, it’s either screaming or crying. (Listen to a 38 second sample below in QuickTime or MP3 format.)

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Trixie has been behaving horribly the past couple of days. She screams bloody murder on the floor, whimpers when held and wails in the crib. We were almost hoping that she was sick in order to provide some kind of explanation, but alas - no fever. So who knows? Maybe she’s teething, maybe she’s constipated, maybe it’s payback for all the rice cereal. We really have tried everything to make her happy. The point of this entry? Just a reminder that babies are not always a bouncing bundle of joy and occasionally they take A LOT of work.

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She followed me into the kitchen this morning. My initial reaction was similar to discovering that a stray animal has followed you home. It’s cute but also a little bit alarming. Are you supposed to feed it? Does it have rabies? In short, “Yes, yes, you’re adorable. Now go home.” Of course, Trixie is home, she doesn’t have rabies and we’ve already been feeding her for about 6 months, so she gets to stay.

The more pressing issue is that I saw the kitchen floor in a whole new light. There are dangers everywhere: laundry detergent, stain remover, recycling, the open dish washer. And Trixie was staring wide-eyed at them all.

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The obligatory grainy ultrasound photo. This is the first visual evidence of what eventually became a Trixie.

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Trixie’s overnight sleep cycles are greatly improving. Out of the last 10 days, she has only woken up twice in the middle of the night. And for the other eight nights she averaged close to 10 hours each! This is a welcome improvement, but we still have the little issue of her daytime schedule. Will it ever stabilize? Will we one day finally be able to kiss the 38-minute catnap goodbye? Weigh in on the latest Trixie poll!

 
include_once "/home/trixie3/public_html/poll/booth.php";
$php_poll->set_template_set(”plain”);
$php_poll->set_max_bar_length(125);
$php_poll->set_max_bar_height(10);
echo $php_poll->poll_process(9);
?>

 

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For an explanation of these images please see:
Sleep Cartography and
The Good, the Bad and the In-between

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(or How Random is Random?)

I’ll admit my bias as a visually oriented person. I am personally drawn to Trixie’s Sleep Maps for their intricate, cartographic patterns. However, while these charts are excellent at expressing disorder — a single glance reveals the unpredictable chaos of the last 7 weeks — they are not so good at revealing patterns, except in cases where the pattern is overwhelming, such as the vertical columns of the ideal sleep map.

The underlying problem is that unless a sleep map is awfully close to ideal, it’s always going to appear chaotic. These maps are good at revealing either perfect or imperfect situations; they have a hard time teasing out any middle ground.

Given this bias, how do you judge how bad a sleep map is? How do you decide what’s a little bit random and what’s a lot random? Even if part of the map stabilizes, such as Trixie’s overnight sleep habits did for the last week, how can you evaluate the rest of the chart?

This problem can be solved if the sleep data is converted into another format. When expressed as a scatterplot, all sorts of very specific patterns are revealed - including Trixie’s infamous ~38 minute cat naps - as well as more subtle trends and even anomalous incidents.

The Distribution Charts below reveal that there are more patterns at work here than previously thought:

The most prominent feature of the Sleep Distribution Chart is the almost solid black line near the bottom that runs from about 7 in the morning to 7 at night. This cluster of dots represents the infamous 38 minute (+/- 5 minutes) naps that are so infuriating to deal with. Fortunately there is a new trend developing directly above this area that represents longer, more substantive naps ranging from 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours. We look forward to this line darkening in. We also hope to see more plots in the upper right-hand corner which reflects Trixie going to bed between 9pm-midnight and sleeping for 7+ hours.

The Wakefulness Distribution Chart does not have as many defined regions. The chart could almost be described by a single arch stretching from early morning to late night that reaches it’s apex around 4:30pm. This reflects her tendency to stay awake progressively longer periods as the day progresses, and then shorter periods from late night to early morning. The main area of concern on this chart is the medium density region between midnight and 6am. These points indicate where she has woken up in the middle of the night, sometimes for 30 minutes or more.

We now understand a little more what we are dealing with. Yet the question remains - Are we any closer to cracking The Sleep Code?

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Only a taste test can tell for sure. Trixie’s third food is the most visually compelling so far. It also has quite a peculiar viscosity: sort of frothy but also gloppy and slimy. Shoveling the green, mucky paste into her gaping mouth is hilarious. The fact that she loves it and leans forward with an open mouth is even better.

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The squash has worked its way through Trixie’s system. Up until this point, we’ve been extremely lucky when it comes to Trixie’s poop. First of all, when a baby only drinks breast milk, the poop is pretty innocuous. I’ve discussed it here on the site before. It’s a wacky yellow-orange mustard color and, while it does smell offensive, it’s usually not that overwhelming. Secondly, it not uncommon for breast milk fed babies to go days without a bowel movement. In Trixie’s case she would regularly go 2-3 and sometimes 4 days without a poopy diaper to clean up. It was one of the bright spots in the world of diapers. Well, we can kiss all that goodbye.

Now that she’s eating real food instead of super-refined breast milk, she’s crapping real poop. And it’s every bit as disgusting as you might imagine. It’s kind of like stepping in a giant pile of dog shit, except that it’s not on your shoe, it’s smeared all over your baby. And instead of happening occasionally when you make a false step at the park, it’s going to happen in your house everyday. I seriously can’t believe that toilet training is ~18 months away.

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