If there were one word to define how we're all feeling these days, it would be "tired."
Also, whoever came up with the phrase "sleeping like a baby" was smoking crack. Babies do not sleep. They nap, sort of. But Sadie's days of passed-out, comatose sleep are already behind her. The kinds of things she used to sleep through, like dog barks and people banging into things and the ringing phone, are now likely to wake her up.
And we cannot have that. We must keep the baby sleeping. Because when the baby sleeps, we...well, we don't sleep. But we at least are able to do things like eat lunch and clean up messes and fold laundry.
Seriously, I am so, so tired. I'm not throwing this out there because I think it's a particularly unique complaint -- but I'd like to record for posterity how tired I am right now so that if we decide to have another child, I can go back through these entries and remind Scott of how tired we once were.
The nature of this weariness is nothing I've ever experienced before. It's not that we get no sleep, ever. I hear horror stories of mothers whose babies wake up every hour or two throughout the night, or who scream until 2am. We're not those people -- in fact, Sadie's pretty easygoing as far as five-weekers go, and if this is the worst it's going to get then we really did get off easy.
So I'd say we both probably get between 5 and 7 hours of sleep every night. But it isn't quality sleep, and it isn't consistent sleep. And somehow, 7 hours spread out between two three-hour stretches over the course of the night and an hour nap in the afternoon leaves me as bleary-eyed and exhausted as if I hadn't slept at all.
Here's our current routine:
One of us takes Sadie into the bedroom around 10pm and gets her to sleep in her crib by 11. (There's no way to get her to sleep earlier than this -- she's developed the power to stay wide-eyed from 7pm right through the end of the 10 o'clock news. Any attempts to put her in her crib are met with EXTREME pissiness.)
We then join the other one in the bedroom, where it turns into a quest to fall asleep quickly so as to utilize sleep time as efficiently as possible. That, of course, inevitably results in not being able to fall asleep quickly.
On a good night, she'll go until 3am. Last night she went until 4am -- a marathon five-hour sleeping stretch that would normally have been cause for celebration...only, I'd woken up at 2:45am, and stayed awake for an hour expecting her to start fussing at any moment.
From 3-4 ish, she gets fed, burped, changed and bounced on the yoga ball to an endless succession of lullabies. This can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour -- or longer, if she happens to nurse than then, ten minutes later, VOMIT ALL OVER HER NICE CLEAN CLOTHES right after I've changed her, necessitating a second changing and also a change of clothes and ROYALLY PISSING HER OFF in the process because it's been cold here recently and the front bedroom is like fifty degrees at night and being naked on a changing table in a freezing cold room is not where a baby wants to be.
NOT THAT THAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT OR ANYTHING.
So after this, there's perhaps time for one last stretch of sleep until daylight, which is when Scott gets up and heats up a bottle and Sadie screams the entire time, which echoes through the baby monitor that rests on the nightstand exactly six inches from my ear, and insures that all three of us are now entirely awake.
Oh, and? It bears mentioning that one Sadie's had her morning meal and we're both good and awake, she smiles at us, drifts right back off into dreamland and proceeds to nap for the rest of the morning.
It's a good thing she's so damn cute.
Also, whoever came up with the phrase "sleeping like a baby" was smoking crack. Babies do not sleep. They nap, sort of. But Sadie's days of passed-out, comatose sleep are already behind her. The kinds of things she used to sleep through, like dog barks and people banging into things and the ringing phone, are now likely to wake her up.
And we cannot have that. We must keep the baby sleeping. Because when the baby sleeps, we...well, we don't sleep. But we at least are able to do things like eat lunch and clean up messes and fold laundry.
Seriously, I am so, so tired. I'm not throwing this out there because I think it's a particularly unique complaint -- but I'd like to record for posterity how tired I am right now so that if we decide to have another child, I can go back through these entries and remind Scott of how tired we once were.
The nature of this weariness is nothing I've ever experienced before. It's not that we get no sleep, ever. I hear horror stories of mothers whose babies wake up every hour or two throughout the night, or who scream until 2am. We're not those people -- in fact, Sadie's pretty easygoing as far as five-weekers go, and if this is the worst it's going to get then we really did get off easy.
So I'd say we both probably get between 5 and 7 hours of sleep every night. But it isn't quality sleep, and it isn't consistent sleep. And somehow, 7 hours spread out between two three-hour stretches over the course of the night and an hour nap in the afternoon leaves me as bleary-eyed and exhausted as if I hadn't slept at all.
Here's our current routine:
One of us takes Sadie into the bedroom around 10pm and gets her to sleep in her crib by 11. (There's no way to get her to sleep earlier than this -- she's developed the power to stay wide-eyed from 7pm right through the end of the 10 o'clock news. Any attempts to put her in her crib are met with EXTREME pissiness.)
We then join the other one in the bedroom, where it turns into a quest to fall asleep quickly so as to utilize sleep time as efficiently as possible. That, of course, inevitably results in not being able to fall asleep quickly.
On a good night, she'll go until 3am. Last night she went until 4am -- a marathon five-hour sleeping stretch that would normally have been cause for celebration...only, I'd woken up at 2:45am, and stayed awake for an hour expecting her to start fussing at any moment.
From 3-4 ish, she gets fed, burped, changed and bounced on the yoga ball to an endless succession of lullabies. This can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour -- or longer, if she happens to nurse than then, ten minutes later, VOMIT ALL OVER HER NICE CLEAN CLOTHES right after I've changed her, necessitating a second changing and also a change of clothes and ROYALLY PISSING HER OFF in the process because it's been cold here recently and the front bedroom is like fifty degrees at night and being naked on a changing table in a freezing cold room is not where a baby wants to be.
NOT THAT THAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT OR ANYTHING.
So after this, there's perhaps time for one last stretch of sleep until daylight, which is when Scott gets up and heats up a bottle and Sadie screams the entire time, which echoes through the baby monitor that rests on the nightstand exactly six inches from my ear, and insures that all three of us are now entirely awake.
Oh, and? It bears mentioning that one Sadie's had her morning meal and we're both good and awake, she smiles at us, drifts right back off into dreamland and proceeds to nap for the rest of the morning.
It's a good thing she's so damn cute.
Any chance you and Scott could really alternate nights, e.g. one of you sleeps ALL night while the other does baby duty?
ReplyDeleteIf you tried this for a week or two, it might help you not to wake up before she does. And you'd feel a lot more rested every other day, at least.
It won't be that long before she'll let you both get a reliable 7-8 hours. Trust me.
That would be great for me, but Scott's the one who has to go to work and be functional all day, while I'm able to steal naps throughout the day, plus nobody's expecting me to be too alert.
ReplyDeleteOn weekends, though, he pulls his weight with the baby duty.
Came by way of [life is good]-- congrats.
ReplyDeletebut I'd like to record for posterity how tired I am right now so that
if we decide to have another child, I can go back through these entries
and remind Scott of how tired we once were.
My 2 1/2 year old son is our second and he still has not settled into what we would consider a normal sleeping pattern. He finally is sleeping through the night but he does not go down as early as his 7 year old sister.