Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Okay, enough with this "Oh woe is me, my baby has a cold" crap

Instead, let's move on to "Oh woe is me, my baby won't sleep," shall we?

Actually, right now she is sleeping, so I probably shouldn't complain. Except I will complain, because yesterday? When I was exhausted? Because even if the baby slept better than I'd hoped the night before, the quality of sleep you get when you have a feverish, snotty baby on top of you? Is not so great. So I had planned to nap with the baby. And the baby Would. Not. Nap. Okay, she napped a little bit. She was a tease. Her longest nap was less than 30 minutes long. And the nap where I laid down beside her and started to doze off myself was under 20 minutes. And that? That was the extent of her napping. Two more times she acted like she was going to nap, but the instant I moved away from her, her eyes flew open and she was ready to play and nothing I did could lull her back to sleep. At six o'clock, after one such incident, I plopped her down in her bed, while I laid down on mine and cried. And because Adriana couldn't tell the difference between crying and laughing, she sat there and giggled at me, until I was laughing too, which was kind of nice.

Adriana's sleep has been strange lately. Brian and I have both been frustrated by it, enough so that I now have The No-Cry Sleep Solution and The Baby Sleep Book lying around the house. They've actually been somewhat effective: whenever I bring a new sleep book into the house, the baby sleeps AWESOME that night. Seriously. These books must have some sort of magic to them.

Anyhow, I actually made it half way through the first book, and I've tried to take some lessons from it, but I haven't gone through her whole routine with keeping a sleep journal and all that. I just brought the second book home from the library yesterday and haven't gotten any further than thinking about the picture of the sleeping baby on the front cover and why the baby has a blanket over him. Babies shouldn't have blankets! Because that's how my mind works right now.

Adriana was a good sleeper for the first couple of months of her life. At first we were a little traumatized by it, actually, as we thought she ought to be waking every two or three hours to nurse. Terrified that she wasn't going to grow properly, we tried waking her ourselves to feed her--undressing her down to her t-shirt and diaper, changing her diaper, touching a cool cloth to her face. She proved to be very stubborn and slept through it all. A friend who is a nurse-midwife and has three children of her own assured me that a full-term baby will wake when she's hungry, and I should just get some rest. It was hard advice to take, but we did it. When she was three months old, I was complaining about how she started waking up twice in the night instead of only once. (Dear Self-in-April: Bitch. Love, Self-in-August) Now two wake-ups counts as a highly successful night. I'm fine with that. I just want more highly successful nights.

I honestly think I'm glad that Adriana slept better at first than she did now. Now I have more energy and more confidence. Back at the beginning when I was battling baby blues brought on by my crazy hormones and painful breastfeeding and a disappointing birth experience, I needed my sleep more than I do now. But still. A couple of long naps and a four-hour stretch at night would be nice to have.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your letter to your past self made me laugh out loud

Anonymous said...

Maybe she's going through a growth phase? I know, I know, the sleep thing kills me. Just when you think you've got something going well it gets all screwed up. I try not to talk about it or even think about it too much because I'm afraid of jinxing any good sleep progress. Ha ha, what sleep deprivation will do to you.

clara said...

she could be giving up the first nap? Maybe try keeping her awake until after lunch & then lay down with her then & maybe she'll give you 2 hours, we can hope:)