21 posts tagged “sleep” (page 2)

I love Baby C. He cracks me up. Since he's still not sleeping through the night (he still wakes up hungry every two to three hours) and hasn't quite started storing up his poops for one gigantic explosion one day (and he may not ever do it - not all babies do), it's inevitable that he will grunt and push and poop during one of his nighttime feedings.

Which means I have to change him. I can't very well let him sit in his own poop all night, even if it's for just a few hours.

So, after his 2:30 feeding (during which he grunted and pushed and pooped... loudly), it was time to change him. And all was fine, at first, since he tends to fall asleep while eating. I hurried to clean him up and get a new diaper on him, and I almost managed to finish without waking him. But just when I thought I was in the clear...

POP!

He opened his eyes wide and gave me an adorable toothless grin.

And, of course, when your baby smiles at you, you can't help but smile back.

Which then led to a smiling contest.

And it meant he was going to be wide awake for a while.

The end result is that he winds up sleeping in our bed about as much as he sleeps in his own. I can't play with him at 3 AM, his daddy can't play with him at 3 AM, and, quite frankly, no one should be awake at 3 AM!

One of these days he will sleep through the night, and he'll be in his own room the whole time. Until then, I'm going to treasure these late night/early morning moments with him as best as I can. After all, it comes with being a new parent. When else are bags under your eyes considered a badge of honor?

Today, Baby C is four weeks old, and I've been able to keep him with me in his bouncy seat while I've worked on the computer. We've discovered he likes music; last night, each time I put him down after feedings, I let him drift off to sleep listening to Bach. But, as it is now daytime, I think Bach is a little too nighttime-ish.

Enter Green Day. For those new to the story, I listened to Green Day nonstop while I was pregnant. In fact, the first time I felt Baby C move, I was listening to "St. Jimmy". It makes a good rock 'n' roll story, anyway. Well, here we are, nice and quiet (and blissfully asleep), even while the non-ballad-esque songs are playing. (No, I'm not playing music from my iTunes at full volume. I'm not that bad of a mom.)

Oh, as I was writing that last bit, Baby C woke himself up just as "Waiting" started playing. (This, by the way, is my favorite Green Day song right now.) It looked like he listened for a few seconds, and he is now just hanging out with his eyes wide open. God bless Green Day!

Baby C is asleep right now, which has given me enough time to have some yogurt, load the dishwasher, wash some dishes that wouldn't fit, take out the recycling, pay bills, and a few other things (like jump online and write a post about what I've been able to do this morning). I ought to be sleeping right now (Lord knows I'm exhausted), but I'm trying to be a little productive this morning so that I don't feel so bad about napping with him this afternoon. (Baby C still needs some light therapy. He's not bright yellow, but he does still have a yellowish tinge to him and I want to be able to honestly tell his pediatrician on Thursday that I exposed the baby to indirect sunlight.)

He's sleeping an awful lot, but his moments of quiet alert time are increasing, as they should. For this reason, it's a lot harder for me to plan my day because I don't know how much alert time we might have, or when. I'm trying to discourage quiet alert time in the evenings in hopes that Baby C will learn the difference between day and night (daytime is for play, nighttime is not), but that's also a lot easier said than done. It's like this bizarre dance: you don't want to discourage him in any way, but you also want a few precious hours of sleep.

But at least he's sleeping in his room. Mind you, we need to swaddle him as tightly as possible (though he somehow always manages to get an arm loose), but it does the trick of calming him.

It was an incredibly long one, but Baby C stayed in his room all night. He actually slept soundly in his crib for about two hours (though not straight), which seemed like a small miracle in and of itself.

Yesterday, I spent the day trying to establish positive messages about his nursery, mainly that this is not a room where we go only when his diaper needs changing, and nor is his crib a place he gets placed only to have Mommy and Daddy suddenly disappear. He spent some quiet awake time in his crib while I wrote thank you notes for my showers, and the entire time, I would either talk to him if he was fussing, or Chris and I would just have regular conversation in the room. It also helped to have Green Day playing on repeat. (I listened to their anthology non-stop while pregnant. I can't help it. I love Green Day.)

So, last night, after a crying jag while on the phone with my mother, I was determined to get him to stay in his room for the night. Yes, there were some mishaps (two leaky diapers, lots of wet clothes, almost pooping on Mom), but all in all, we fared pretty well. Okay, he fared pretty well. Chris took over at 5 this morning (I was to the point of exhaustion by then), but with little avail; I had to feed him at 7, anyway, and promptly fell asleep holding him. But I'm determined to get him sleeping in his crib. Maybe not through the night (he's only a week old, after all), but at least sleeping in his crib consistently.

The thing is, and a major reason for my crying fit while talking to my own mother, I honestly thought it would be a lot easier to get him sleeping in his crib. How hard could it be, right? Except that his first night, his room still smelled like paint, so I couldn't exactly leave him in there. Then the subsequent nights, I was so exhausted (and still sore), I was willing to do anything to get some sleep. And though I'm still not totally healed, I'm at least able to get out of bed a bit faster to tend to him - and that's the biggest part of having him sleep in his own room, even if it is less than 50 paces from my bedside to his.

And I wondered why veteran moms looked at me like I was insane...

Okay, you've no idea how insane the past few days and nights have been. Well, if you're a Mommy, then you know, but just bear with me. I had no idea how insane the past few days and nights would be.

Baby C would not stay in his crib for more than a few minutes - just enough time for me to grab something from the fridge or snuggle with my husband for a few fleeting moments. The result was that either Chris or I had to hold him the entire day, which, darling as it is sounds, is a logistical nightmare. He slept with us in our bed the last four nights, which means I really didn't get much sleep at all.

Anyway, last night, he took his pacifier for the first time. It was such a monumental moment, I wrote it down on my calendar. He slept in the crib all of five minutes last night, though, which I figured is at least a start. But now, he has actually been in his crib - not necessarily sleeping, but just hanging out (which I totally accept) for the past twenty minutes. I can hear him cooing a little, and I did need to go in there really quick to check on him and replace his pacifier, but other than that, I'm in motherhood bliss!

I just hope it lasts... and that he'll be able to sleep on his own tonight.

Whenever I think of this time, I think of "Always in the Back of My Mind" by Spandau Ballet. It's a fairly deep track from their Parade LP - scary that I can remember all these little details but forget much of the bigger picture. If you know the song and the lyrics, you'd understand why this time reminds me of that song. If you don't, well, I won't bore you with the back story.

Anyway, it's been a fairly restless night. I can't say that totally, of course - I got a few hours of solid shut eye between my increasingly common trips to the bathroom. But I'm awake now, and short of going on a cleaning spree in the kitchen, I really don't know what to do, hence my surfing the 'net. (The kitchen cleaning spree is starting to sound lovely, except that I will probably be sore after just a few minutes.)

I suppose I ought to crawl back into bed and try to go back to sleep. Even if today is Friday, I still need to make it through one more day before I can spend all of tomorrow morning asleep. And tomorrow, I have a prenatal massage awaiting me at the nearby Omni Resort. Yes, I think I will go to bed now. I've got tomorrow's massage to anticipate.

But first, I'll see what I can quickly put away in the kitchen. :-)

What do you do to ensure you get a good night's sleep?
Submitted by Jacob's Ladder.

A good night's sleep? HA! I don't remember the last time I had a really good night's sleep. I expect I never will sleep soundly ever again, even after my son goes away to college.

But to ensure I get any sleep at all, I have 9 pillows on my bed (including one great big body pillow that is fantastic at keeping my belly fairly stable and a king-sized pillow that I use to keep me from rolling completely onto my back), not counting the 3 my husband uses. Then, I've been going to bed only when I'm truly tired exhausted, and that seems to do the trick. I'll just wake up a few times throughout the night but manage to fall back asleep fairly soon after.

Of course, now that I've written my trick, I will have (more) terrible luck sleeping for the rest of my pregnancy - just wait and see!

I didn't have a good night last night. It started out well enough: I was in bed by 10:15 and asleep by 10:30 (and the kitchen was nice and clean). But at around 1:30, I woke up in a weird position, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't ignore the backache and go back to sleep. So, I got up and lounged on the couch with my heating pad.

On the plus side, I'm almost done with the baby blanket I'm making for my coworker and the coming addition to his family (his wife is about 3 or 4 weeks behind me). Just 14 more rounds and the edging left. Then I'll start on my own (or maybe one for my friend Alyne, only she doesn't know yet if she's having a boy or a girl and I'd like to make the decorative stripes on hers a little more specific if I can).

So, lounging on the couch, it was a battle for attention between my aching back and my kicking baby. Every time I tried to doze off (because I was comfortable), I got kicked awake. This lasted until about 3:15, when I decided my back was feeling well enough to return to bed. Meanwhile, for the better part of an hour and a half, my husband would call for me in his sleep. It's very sweet, I know. (This is another reason I say I have the best husband in the world.)

Now I'm struggling through another Friday, barely awake and with only half of my brain power. I don't know that the missing brain power is all that noticeable, though; I already feel like I've been barely coherent of late.

It's been a very busy week, both at work and at home, and I'm beginning to feel its effects on me. I hate feeling like this.

I discovered that I can sleep straight through (meaning more than 4 or 5 hours) if I'm absolutely exhausted when I crawl into bed. Last night, after my last post, I took a shower, straightened the kitchen, then worked on a baby blanket I started crocheting several months ago (just one round, though) before I crawled into bed. I was out not long after my head hit the pillow, and though I woke up a few times in the middle of the night, I was able to fall back to sleep fairly soon afterwards. I'm also wide awake by 8:15 or so, so I'm able to get to work on time each morning.

The down side, of course, is I need to get to the point of exhaustion so that I can sleep. On a positive note, my house is progressively getting cleaner and the areas I've scoured earlier aren't lapsing back into chaos. I should be thankful for small mercies like these.

I've wanted a feather bed for as long as I can remember. It might be because of that John Denver song, or because it was something my parents just never thought of having. After all, no one really collects feathers to stuff pillows, mattresses, or anything else in the Philippines. In fact, I really don't think there would be a point of having a feather bed in the Philippines, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, some very good family friends gave Chris and me a feather bed as a wedding present, which was a huge surprise because I think it's something completely extravagant. But I was also afraid that, with the warm weather we usually have here in Florida, it would be too warm to use. Even if we only used it a few weeks out of the year, I reasoned, it was still worth having a feather bed.

So, last night, after suffering with an aching back most of the day, I asked my husband if he would be okay sleeping on top of the feather bed, just so I could see if sleeping on a soft surface would really help me rest. He agreed (I didn't think he would mind; after all, he would sleep on a cloud if he could - I'm the one who likes firmer mattresses), and I put the feather bed onto our mattress and rearranged the bedding.

Oh my goodness - I think I slept better last night than I have in a very long time. I fell asleep promptly (I'm usually wide awake for at least an hour after lying down), and I didn't wake up until after 4! It was glorious - and it didn't even make the bedding hot, which was my biggest fear. I was so comfortable (surrounded by my 8 pillows - I realized I needed another pillow as I was settling in last night, and Chris was kind enough to grab one from one of the guest rooms for me), it was absolute bliss!

I don't know that sleep will ever regain its status as a favorite pasttime, but the feather bed sure made sleeping more comfortable!