Every Rep Counts: Fatherhood, Rehab & Strength - Episode IV: The Quiet Reps

Episode IV is about the reps nobody sees, the ordinary, quiet ones, the ones that just needed doing.

Well, Would You Look At That!

As quickly as Lucy had ‘learned to fly,’ she started to get much greater control of her head and neck movements … and she entered what we came to call her sticky-beaking phase. Lucy’s world opened up and expanded beyond her nose. Curiosity had well and truly taken hold, and she became an explorer before she’d even taken her first step.

If something moved, made a noise, or even simply existed slightly outside her immediate field of view, Lucy needed to see it. And once she had locked onto something interesting, she would twist herself in whatever direction, and into whatever body position was required to keep looking at it.

Self-preservation did not feature heavily in this decision-making process. Held in your arms, she would crane her neck, arch her back, and rotate her entire little body in ways that seemed biomechanically ambitious for someone who had only been on Earth for a few months.
Gravity, apparently, was someone else’s problem.

If whatever had caught her attention moved again, she would lean further, twist harder, determined to maintain visual contact, even if that meant slowly unscrewing herself from the arms that were holding her. At which point the person holding her would instinctively tighten their grip and readjust.

 

Now, when Lucy finally locked onto whatever had captured her attention, she had another little trick.
She could stare.
Not just look.
Stare.
Right through you.
Mouth slightly open.
Resting baby face in full force.
Completely still.
Completely expressionless.
Except for the small droplet of dribble hanging from her lip, suspended by a thin strand that grew longer… and longer… while she conducted whatever silent investigation she was currently running.
It was hard to know whether she was studying the world … or judging it.

At this stage of a baby's development, everything matters. All at once. And needs to be looked at, right now. They don't have a filtering system yet, this is just how they build one. And in those moments, curiosity clearly outranks balance.

As an aside, even as adults, we’re still drawn to new and novel things, but we get better at ensuring our personal safety first … sometimes …. Anyway.

The Fridge Wins

It’s a good thing babies can absorb nutrients through their face, because so much food just ends up there, rather than in their mouth. Tongue in cheek, obviously haha.
Lucy has this fantastic skill that when a spoonful of food is almost in her mouth, she’ll snap her head around because the fridge rattled, or Dad’s knee cracked as he tried to join the table quietly, or a microscopic piece of fluff floated by, and the spoon will hit her on the face where her mouth was a millisecond ago. And instead of twisting out of someone’s arms, she’ll corkscrew up from her highchair, and we’ll both need to be on guard to make sure she doesn’t pop out like a cork!

And while she’s trying to build a model of the world, she can’t eat efficiently, or sit still, or cooperate, much to her parents’ frustration. Her brain is driving her to look, turn, track, stare, and then repeat.
From her perspective, that fridge rattle was more important than food.

And there are some parallels with rehab here in that you can’t speed it up, you can’t reason with it, even though it absolutely does your head in at times.
All you can do is adjust.
Repeat.
Try again.
Wipe puree off cheek.
Reload spoon.
Go again.

How Can I Sleep While I'm Sticky-Beaking?

Curiosity has a downside though, and the chaotic combination of that, increasing muscle strength, improving movement control, and absolutely no idea about cause and effect, results in a baby that absolutely must check everything out even though it is pitch black!

And we’ve also discovered that she now has a pretty decent arm on her … she can hit the curtain with her dummy from the other side of the room. She certainly didn’t get that from me …

Anyway, Lucy hadn’t stopped being a Velcro baby, and it became like a billion times harder to get her to settle. The small gains we had made seemed to disappear as she went through one of the many so-called sleep regressions. She had even stopped being able to fall asleep on my lap for naps … possibly because the hair on my arms and chest was just too fascinating for her, and presented an irresistible tool with which to build her grip strength … and wow, could she grip and PULL!!!

It all started to fall back on Anna again. Those feelings of guilt, frustration, and being only half useful started to creep back in. But I kept trying, with Anna’s support, and eventually one night, something changed. Lucy fought hard, she reached 103 decibels, but after an hour or so, I felt her body relax … not much, just a tad … but it was enough, and this was my chance.

I ‘gently rocked’ like I had never gently rocked before, I did controlled side lunges until my legs were on fire, and I ‘shooshed’ until I could shoosh no more, but eventually, she fell asleep in my arms.
Hallelujah!

In my excitement, I tried to transfer her to the cot a little too quickly, but I gathered myself and tried again. Success!
She only managed to stay asleep in the cot for 20 minutes or so before she woke up and started screaming in my face again.
But it was another micro-win building on earlier micro-wins.

Cot PBs

Getting that first cot transfer under my belt opened things up. In gym terms, it felt like breaking through a plateau. Not a big one. Not one that anyone would really notice, but enough to change what progress looked like.

It could be 25 minutes in the cot next time, a slightly more coordinated transfer from my arms, or even a longer stretch before my shoulder complained! It didn’t matter, these things all showed progress. It didn’t look like much from the outside. But to me, it all counted.

In lifting, I’d spent years trying to make my movement more efficient: bar path, body positioning, optimal reps, fewer variables. Lucy had absolutely no interest in that kind of thing. Her approach seemed to be to try everything, look everywhere, and if all else fails, twist harder.

Lucy’s movement standards were improving though, with a confidence that belied how messy and inefficient she was. She’d gone from potato, to crawling, to walking, with form that would have any half-decent ref reaching for the red flag. But she practises, boy does she practise … her step count must be phenomenal by now … and still falls on her butt all the time. But she gets back up, sometimes with Mum or Dad’s help, and she goes again.

My various bouts of rehab had already taught me a pretty annoying lesson. The boring stuff is usually the useful stuff. Nobody posts videos of themselves doing band exercises for months on end. Nobody congratulates you for successfully making another bottle, changing another nappy, or rocking a baby back to sleep at 2:17 in the morning. But progress rarely seems interested in being exciting.

Babies Don't Reward Competence

Of course, the dangerous thing about a small win is that you can start to believe in your own hype. In most parts of life, competence gets rewarded. At work, in the gym, even in rehab, you can usually see a line linking effort and some kind of positive outcome. With a baby, that line just gets drooled on, covered with sticky handprints, or has a dummy pegged at it. You can do everything right and still get told that you are the weakest link.

Here’s a story about how one of my turns at Lucy’s night-time routine didn’t quite go as planned.

It started out as a normal evening, with it being my turn to settle Lucy down and get her to sleep. But, as is sometimes the case, Lucy wasn’t happy with what I had to offer. Despite proving to her, and to myself, over the previous weeks and months that I was actually capable and competent of completing this task, she just wasn’t settling. She fought, I fought back, I read the same book umpteen times, and after what felt like three days, Anna offered to swap out with me. My ears begged me to accept her offer, but my rubber arm didn’t need much twisting.

As soon as the bedroom door opened, and Anna’s head popped through, Lucy’s screaming was reduced to light grizzles. As Anna came closer, those grizzles stopped when Lucy enthusiastically reached out for Mum. Once her hands made contact with Anna’s shoulders, a big smile broke through the tears.

Once safely in Mum’s arms, she turned to me with that same toothy full-face smile and pointed back over my shoulder to the door. And then laughed.

But the best was yet to come.
I took the hint, and retreated from the bedroom, dragging my tattered ego with me. After a few minutes, Anna joined me back out in the family room, having somehow settled Lucy and got her off to sleep.
Then Anna hit me with the punchline. Almost as soon as I had left the bedroom, and closed the door, Lucy clapped.

We both broke out into hysterics – muted hysterics because we didn’t want to wake the bub up. We ended up having that silent, whole-body, tears-rolling kind of laughter, where your abs and your cheeks get their best workout in years.

I know that Lucy wasn’t clapping because I was gone, and I know that she wasn’t pointing to the door and giving me a send-off, like she’d just got the first wicket in an Ashes series.

I know that it wasn’t anything personal, because I’ve learnt that babies don’t reward competence. You could be the best shoosher and rocker in the world, but if she wants Mum, and not Hairy Boobless Mum, then you’re fighting a losing battle.

Let's Go Around Again

You know what else is boring? Consistency.

We all like to think of ourselves as superheroes, but that isn’t what our injured bodies, or our babies really need. They need consistency.

Feeding again. Rocking again. Picking her up again. Trying again.
Making another bottle. Picking up the dummy for the 400th time, if you can find it!
Picking up the spoon she has just deliberately dropped whilst maintaining full eye contact.
Another set of midnight side lunges. Another messy face to wipe.
Picking Lucy up again after another fall. Another cuddle. Another attempt at settling her.
Replacing the blanket she kicked off. And then replacing it again.
Shushing again. Moving slower because she’s finally asleep.
Quietly sitting next to the cot, enjoying the silence, because you finally got her transferred from your aching arms.

None of these are dramatic. None of them get applause. None of them feel profound while you’re doing them. But that is exactly the point. It was what needed doing, and it all counts. Because that is how you become a known factor in your baby’s world, one that is expanding day by day.

Rehab isn’t just one magical session, and parenting isn’t just one big act of love. They are both made up of small things, done consistently. Another set of band exercises. An extra two reps this week. And Lucy needs to be picked up again.

The Quiet Part

Small room. Soft breathing. Tired body. Quiet proof.

Just like with injury rehab, parental wins can be fragile and very, very temporary.

On one of those nights, I had just got her back into her cot, and on the third time she didn’t fight it. A gentle sigh, a roll onto her side, and an arching stretch of her tiny back. These moments were gold. Sleep had finally found her. It had cost me a pair of reading glasses and an eyeball, but it was worth it.

I slowly lowered myself onto the foot stool next to the cot, hoping that it was still vaguely in the right position. Success. No abrupt movements, no loud noises. I placed my arms gently on the cot’s railing, then rested my forehead on them, listening for Lucy’s little breaths. Sometimes they’re snotty, and sometimes they’re loud, but that night, I could barely hear them over my own heartbeat.

A sharp intake, a sigh, as she rolled onto her back, with the dummy tumbling from her mouth. She rarely uses one of these anymore, except to help settle her down for a sleep. Or as a way to train her arm for the active life she may well have ahead of her. Another day had ended, no applause, no big moment, just another rep done.

One day she won’t need help getting to sleep or need to be picked up from the floor. But for now, she does, so we do.

And tomorrow, we’ll do it again.

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