Every time I get excited about how lucky we are to have a good baby who sleeps so well, Karma gives me a swift kick in the rear and I am humbled again. Last night is a great example of this. The first time lo woke up was at midnight. My mindset has always been that if he is going to wake to eat in the middle of the night, as babies his age typically do, it might as well be right before I go to bed. That way I will get more consecutive hours sleep, right? Wrong! Last night he also woke up at 2:30am. Although typically I wouldn’t have fed him after waking up from such a short stretch of time, I was honestly so tired that I had little to no awareness of my surroundings between rolling out of bed and attaching him to my boob. It’s as if I was a sleep walking pre-programmed robot. My eyes were sticky as my friend so accurately describes it…so needless to say it wasn’t until he was nestled into my breast comfortably that i noticed only 2 and a half hours had passed since his last feed. Oh well, at least now he will have a really full tummy and will probably sleep an even longer stretch… I started dreaming about how great it would be to sleep until 8am. Beeeehhh!! Wrong again!
His next waking was at 4am in which he decided it was time to party and invited all of his animal friends to join in the fun. He was wide awake in his crib having a happy chat and his legs were going as if training for the Tour de France. Between 4 and 6:30am I must have been in his room at least 20 times responding to his off and on demanding squeals. I tried a variety of techniques which did not include nursing him to sleep or removing him from the crib. My goal was to “teach him to self soothe”, a concept that seemed less logical as each morning hour passed. After each successful attempt I would return to my bed, pull the soft fuzzy covers over me, wait for my cat to reposition himself next to me and soak into the warmth of my husband.
My eyes would get heavy again and just as i began drifting into a world filled with all you can eat Reese peanut butter cups, I would hear little one longing for my presence once again.
Finally at 6:30am I decided to give in and bring him into my bed, something I do often but not usually until much later in the morning. That is when I finally got a nice hour and half long snooze, of course the quality of sleep is drastically compromised when you share your bed with a baby but I wasn’t complaining about getting sleep at that point.
My morning got even better when i noticed lo had a diaper leak on my freshly washed sheets and the one nap I can usually count on lasted a whole 25 minutes. I was a “mombie” most of the day, putting the peanut butter in the fridge, adding salt to my coffee and walking into furniture and what not. The only thing that is good about a bad day, is knowing tomorrow HAS to be better…we shall see!
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