Sleep

Sleep


I feel the need to blog about sleep. I have a 2 month old baby. Hmm, but I’ve had a nap this afternoon and can’t remember the gems of wisdom that seemed so important when I was even more sleep deprived.

Its funny, you can look normal (well, pjs at 4 pm is normal, right?) hold a superficial conversation- mostly, but the distraction could just be multiple children, right?

I’ve managed not to try to pay at the supermarket with my rewards card too often (my bank card is the same colour, in my defence) and this time I don’t think I’ve left the house door wide open (or just unlocked), the van door ajar in a carpark, nothing like other times when I had only one baby to care for. Hmm, having older kids mean they remind me of the basics more, perhaps that’s why my mistakes haven’t been so obvious.

Having more kids around does mean for higher noise levels, and I do find background noise seriously impairs me when I’m tired, but nodding and smiling gets me though conversations amazingly well.

Sleep, its a five letter word. Breastfeeding- that has too many letters to count. Last time around with Flower (renaming children- my blog, my prerogative) cosleeping and breastfeeding made life fabulous- sure babies feed through the night, but what a revelation it was that mums don’t have to really wake up to do it! Perfect!

Well, Rainbow (yup, another renamed child) and I have to sit up for some of the night feeds, though that is improving. Actually, its more the lying down feeds aren’t always so great for him, so I need to sit up to wind him which means I wake more, but its still better than either walking across the room to sit up for every feed, or figuring out the instructions for making formula safely in the middle of the night (I recall it involves boiled water cooled to no less than 70 degrees- too hot and you denature the nutrients in it, too cool and risk taziki bacteria, or something like that- thanks formula companies for not making formula powder sterile, so its the parents making it up wrong that poisons the kids, not the nice friendly international moneymaking companies).



Decision making is a problem though. I think my agonizing over whether to get Rainbow’s tongue tie snipped was partly due to sleep deprivation. I wanted to evaluate all the information I had, but struggled to remember the information, let alone evaluate it. I’m feeling pretty lucky though. In the grand scheme of things, I haven’t had to make huge decisions like stopping breastfeeding, or deciding about organ transplants or consent to serious surgery for any of my loved ones- I’ve just let a trusted professional hopefully give us a serious chance at long term breastfeeding. I couldn’t help DH decide what tea was going to be though, that was too hard.

Anyway, I’m rambling a bit, Oh wait, I’m talking about sleep- of course I’m rambling. At the moment 3 hours in a row is a luxury, but overall I think I’m coping. We’ve just had a growth spurt ( I think!) which meant going back to feeding 2 hrly half the night, then every hour for the last half. By 2 hourly I don’t mean a 2 hour gap between feeds, I mean from the start of one feed to the start of another- so in that 2 hours there’s the feed (anywhere between 10 and 40 mins), nappy change if you have a super wee machine (so we do that half way through the night, not every feed) settling him to sleep, settling me to sleep, then a bit of sleep before he’s ready for the next feed.Sigh. I remember first time around with Princess (yup, renamed child No 1 as well) when I could get 4 hours straight I felt amazing!

Babies 2 months old shouldn’t sleep through the night as a rule. That’s dangerous. Feeding through the night does helpful things like stopping periods for longer. Scary things like SIDS happen. Part of the reason I like sleeping with my baby means I can tell their breathing without getting up, sneaking into their room, and hovering until I end up poking them to make sure they breath (Sorry, Princess, I read mainstream parenting books back then), though thinking about it she was around 3 months when she moved rooms.