- One catch: hot nights. Last night we couldn't swaddle because it was too warm. So I just slept with a sweaty, sticky baby in my arms all night, until dawn when finally it was cool enough to swaddle him, put him in the co-sleeper, and catch one more hour of sleep. I'm getting more nervous about sleeping with him in my arms because I've become so tired that I'm sleeping more heavily and waking up disoriented to make sure he's okay. We need to turn on the AC but in the dead of summer it doesn't really work that well.
- Reverse cycling! Over the weekend I had my suspicions that he wasn't eating that much during the day, but it's hard to tell with nursing. Yesterday at daycare he did only drink 3 oz at his morning feeding, where he normally takes 4 or 5. Judy said he concluded this short feeding with a big grin, little stinker. So he's saving up his hunger for mama, preferring to nurse all evening and night long. I think it's partly that and partly that he's such a busy bee during the day, more interested in playing than eating.
My AAP infant care book says that most, but not all, infants will be sleeping through the night (7 - 8 hours) by three months. Consider us "not all." When people used to ask if he was sleeping through the night, I used to smile and say "not yet!" Now I laugh.
On Sunday I was so bedraggled and desperate I considered breaking my vow not to read sleep training books. I was thinking about picking up the one called The No Cry Sleep Solution - it saying "no cry" right there in the title! But then I read some excerpts. For one thing, it seems the Solution involves taking out the baby's pacifier and gently holding his mouth closed. Really? This is going to make him sleep through the night? You've got to be kidding me.
But more than that, the author advised the reader that if she's trying to sleep train for the wrong reasons, or has ambivalence about it, it's not going to work. Now, I'm pretty sure that being bone tired is one of the right reasons, but the truth of the matter is, I am deeply ambivalent about it. That, and the fitting fact that I couldn't leave the house at all on Sunday because my baby was so all-encompassing of the day, stopped me from buying that or any sleep manual.
Then I read something on Kellymom about how some of the "problems" we perceive with babies, particularly around sleep, are really just our desire and/or need to get infants to conform to an adult lifestyle. This hit home like a laser-guided missile. Certainly, I am tired. But Miles is just being a baby. His schedule doesn't conform to mine, but I'm the one who's more adaptable, who can conceptualize a schedule in the first place, who can drink coffee. I'm the parent. I can adjust. I can deal. While I'm not in favor of mothers feeling obligated to be martyr, the truth is, I don't mind doing this, not really.
The truth is, I am greedy and selfish and crave more time and contact with my baby. I beyond exhausted, completely out of my mind with weariness in the middle of the night, and yet. There is something quietly delicious about night wakings, the furtive diaper changes, drowsy feedings, feeling that impossibly small warm hand touch my arm in the night.
The truth is that when I manage to "put him to bed" in the evening (a concept that seems slightly absurd knowing that I will put him to bed two, four, a million more times that night but still I persist with this routine), when I succeed in getting him to sleep around 7 pm and go back downstairs to watch TV with my husband, I miss the baby. Who's right upstairs.
There was one night when I slept for five - FIVE! - glorious hours in a row. I felt like the queen of the world the next day. I want to sleep. I want to sleep in shifts that are longer than two hours. But there is that little piece of me that enjoys being up at 2 am kissing the top of my baby's head, and so no, I won't be reading sleep books just yet. I'll continue my haphazard trial and error and time-tested method of Waiting for Him to Outgrow It for now.
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