Me: I’m hungry and I’m tired and I’ve been a human tissue all day.
J: Well, at least you’re the soft lotiony kind.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Midnight Dilemma
I am not getting enough sleep. The kids are each doing decent stretches (no sleeping-through-the-night or anything, but B was down to one night nursing, and M down to 2, on their best nights). But lately I’ve been up every couple of hours with one or the other.
When they were little (I can’t believe I just started a sentence that way! I have kids - that used to be little - can you believe it?) we used to wake the second for a feeding when the first woke. But at some point I thought we should let them set their own schedules - if one could sleep through, it would be silly to wake them (and might teach them to wake up when what I really want is for them to sleep). But now I’m up all the time, and I often have trouble falling asleep because I just know that the next waking is around the corner. (Now, for example. I went to bed and waited, and sure enough I was up in 20 minutes. And now I can’t sleep. Ugh.*)
What do I do?
(a) Keep letting them set their own schedules. They’re working on a developmental spurt, I think (when are they not?) - B is close to crawling. They might be teething. Once we get past this hurdle, we might be back to fewer night wakings, and I don’t want to have screwed that up.
(b) If it seems like a reasonable stretch since the last waking, wake baby #2 after baby #1 nurses. Which is good except that I acually dread the babies waking at the same time, since at night I can’t really tandem them (at least not without waking J, and that turns it into a whole big production and makes everyone more awake and harder to settle, plus he does have to get up for work these days). Plus, then I’m encouraging them to wake every 4 hours or whatever one of them is doing, rather than encouraging them to sleep through. Aren’t I?
(c) Night wean. Or at least work harder to cut back on night nursing. When we did our big sleep project, we spent a couple of nights following a set of rules around night wakings that meant soothing them sometimes, and allowing them to nurse at others (since I’m not so sure they can go 12 hours without nursing at all). I gave it up because it seemed so arbitrary for them - at 11 they wake up and get shushed but not nursed, but at 1 they get nursed right away? How do they know it’s 11 and not 1? It just didn’t work so well for me. But then I stopped trying to soothe them back to sleep at all (except for the early night wakings - anything before 10 or 11), and just nurse every time. And I know at least some of the times they’re not really hungry (2 hours after their last waking/nursing? I think not.)
Any advice/tips/warnings/encouragement? Please?
* And sure enough, after I wrote the initial draft here and started to go back to bed, baby #2 woke.
When they were little (I can’t believe I just started a sentence that way! I have kids - that used to be little - can you believe it?) we used to wake the second for a feeding when the first woke. But at some point I thought we should let them set their own schedules - if one could sleep through, it would be silly to wake them (and might teach them to wake up when what I really want is for them to sleep). But now I’m up all the time, and I often have trouble falling asleep because I just know that the next waking is around the corner. (Now, for example. I went to bed and waited, and sure enough I was up in 20 minutes. And now I can’t sleep. Ugh.*)
What do I do?
(a) Keep letting them set their own schedules. They’re working on a developmental spurt, I think (when are they not?) - B is close to crawling. They might be teething. Once we get past this hurdle, we might be back to fewer night wakings, and I don’t want to have screwed that up.
(b) If it seems like a reasonable stretch since the last waking, wake baby #2 after baby #1 nurses. Which is good except that I acually dread the babies waking at the same time, since at night I can’t really tandem them (at least not without waking J, and that turns it into a whole big production and makes everyone more awake and harder to settle, plus he does have to get up for work these days). Plus, then I’m encouraging them to wake every 4 hours or whatever one of them is doing, rather than encouraging them to sleep through. Aren’t I?
(c) Night wean. Or at least work harder to cut back on night nursing. When we did our big sleep project, we spent a couple of nights following a set of rules around night wakings that meant soothing them sometimes, and allowing them to nurse at others (since I’m not so sure they can go 12 hours without nursing at all). I gave it up because it seemed so arbitrary for them - at 11 they wake up and get shushed but not nursed, but at 1 they get nursed right away? How do they know it’s 11 and not 1? It just didn’t work so well for me. But then I stopped trying to soothe them back to sleep at all (except for the early night wakings - anything before 10 or 11), and just nurse every time. And I know at least some of the times they’re not really hungry (2 hours after their last waking/nursing? I think not.)
Any advice/tips/warnings/encouragement? Please?
* And sure enough, after I wrote the initial draft here and started to go back to bed, baby #2 woke.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Sad news
Sad news doesn’t even begin to cover it.
I’m sitting here, crying, waiting for my babies to wake from what I would have grumbled was a too-short nap, but now all I can think is how much I want to hug them tight and not let go.
I’m sitting here, crying, waiting for my babies to wake from what I would have grumbled was a too-short nap, but now all I can think is how much I want to hug them tight and not let go.
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