Better Days

Well, yesterday got better.  Jack napped THREE HOURS in the swing, woo!  I napped on the couch.  Of course the gardeners showed up in the middle and were running the leafblower 10 feet from my head, but I still managed to get some sleep.

We spent the afternoon doing our usual things:  tummy time, dancing, singing, a bath, and a walk.  Last night he slept better, though still not in super long stretches.  BUT, I put him down before he was completely asleep (usually I hold him 20 minutes or so first) and held down his arms and talked to him til he was calm.  When I let go he was still awake, but then he put himself to sleep!  He woke up again around 2 and again put himself back to sleep.  Fabulous!

He’s still eating every 4 hours at night on average, and we have to find a way to stretch that out, probably by getting up with him and soothing him when he starts his full-blown crying.  Hopefully we can inch it out slowly til he goes a full night.

In other good news, I weighed him this morning at my mother’s group and he gained 9 ounces!  This week I pumped once or twice a day and we gave him a bottle once or twice a day.  Also I think one of the reasons he keeps coming off his latch is because he’s distracted; I found putting a burp cloth over his head helps that somewhat.

So, I’m still exhausted, but much happier.

Well, That Sucked

Last night was once of the worst nights yet (sleeping-wise).  I had high hopes, because he’d napped pretty well during the day.  But he just wouldn’t settle; I spent most of the night soothing him (either holding down his arms or holding in the pacifier) to try and get him into deep sleep.  But he wasn’t having any of it.

I think I had a bunch of 15-minute naps in there.  I fed him at 12, 4 and 8.  At 6:15 the smoke alarm in our room went off.  I got up and changed Jack’s very wet diaper and Chris dealt with the smoke detector.  So poor Chris didn’t get a lot of sleep either.

I stayed in bed until 10 hoping Jack would drop off, but the whole time he was making noises and thrashing around and eventually crying.  At 10 I couldn’t take it any more and I took him into his room and put him in the crib with his mobile.  I went back to my room and closed the door and got back into bed and cried.

I cried because I’d set my expectations that we were going to have a decent night of sleep.  I cried because the whole day was stretching before me with no relief.  I cried listening to his crying.  Most of all I cried because I was beyond exhausted.

He cried 6 minutes, then settled into just being noisy.  After a while he started crying again and I finally resigned myself to never sleeping again and got up.

Of course, he’s been a happy chappy all morning, smiling and generally charming the pants off me.

He JUST went to sleep in the swing, so I’m gonna lie on the couch and see if I can sleep too.

Who Needs Sleep?

Who needs sleep?  Well, you’re never gonna get it…

- Barenaked Ladies

Lack of sleep is still the most difficult thing I’m dealing with right now.  I think in the last 3 months I have had two instances of 5 hours of consecutive sleep (when Jack was downstairs with Chris and Chris fed him).  Mostly I sleep in 1-3 hour increments.

I am so tired.  I don’t think my body is even capable of sleeping longer anyway; this morning my parents were here and I brought Jack down to them and went back to bed but woke up after 3 hours unable to go back to sleep.

Jack’s making incremental progress.  He is sleeping more in his cosleeper, and has had 2 6-hour stretches between feedings (those were nights he slept in the bed with us, though).  I think his longest sleep in the cosleeper was 4 hours and that’s only happened once.

I prefer him to sleep in the cosleeper because I sleep better.  We have a queen-sized bed and really that’s just enough space for me and Chris.  When he’s in bed with us I’m always waking up when he stirs, or waking up to make sure the sheet hasn’t covered his face.

I am jealous of the people I know whose babies sleep through the night.  Some of them have babies who slept through the night all on their own, and some of them have babies who they’ve done varying degrees of “cry it out” with.

As Jack gets older I am more willing to let him cry a little, but at this point (nearly 3 months) I am still picking him up when he cries in the middle of the night.  We’ll see, my sleep-deprivation may win out in the end.

His napping is getting a little bit better; he has now napped in his swing in the morning for 2.5 hours a couple of times!  Woo!  His afternoon naps are pretty hit and miss; some days he just has cat naps.

Some day, I shall sleep again…  Probably just in time to have another kid.