Now that Wally's almost five, not taking a nap most days and sleeping better, there are mornings where he sleeps until 7 or even 7:30 and I wake up -- naturally, on my own -- before he does. (Before Alex's alarm clock even which seems to go off at just about 7 even though that's when he has to leave the house?) It is an incredible feeling not to be wrenched out of sleep with a crowbar. 

I thought it happened this morning and I was just luxuriating in the quiet time to myself when I realized it was just after 4 am. I couldn't fall back asleep, but I wasn't productive either. I did, however, enjoy the quiet, without anxiety about falling back to sleep.

It's been a nice winter here so far. No real snow storms, but at least these little light dustings of snow that give the right visual for a few hours in the morning.

A steady stream of agent rejections for our chick lit/women's fiction novel. I should be starting to fill out kindergarten applications. There's a women who works in our zoned school who was a student under my grandmother at IS 70 more than four decades ago. I'm going to a new ob practice this time because of insurance but I recently met with a midwife who it turns out was one of the nurses at my delivery five years ago. New York still has that small-town feel. 

I am bracing myself for another couple years of being wrenched out of sleep with a crowbar every hour on the hour during the night. In the beginning though this time I'm not going to follow the feed-the-baby-every-2-hours rule during the night. Did anyone else follow that? I think it was only NYU that even brought up that ludicrous idea. I sometimes wonder if waking Wally up all night like that (after feeding, changing him, rocking him back to sleep, he'd usually have just an hour before we woke him for the next feeding) got him started on a lifetime of bad sleeping habits. He's still up in the middle of the night several nights a week, even now.

I know it's not recommended that you "never wake a sleeping baby" the way our parents did (and that was back when we slept really well, if not safely, on our tummies). But every 4 hours or so seems adequate. I also read about "The Pause" in Bringing up Bebe. Instead of assuming a baby is awake every time it squirms and fusses, pause, wait and see. It may just be transitioning between phases. If you rush in at those times, you'll disturb the baby's ability to tie sleep phases together. Or so say the French, and apparently the guy who own Tribeca Pediatrics, who may also be French. I forget now. I've been up too long and the day is just starting. Another bright winter day. A blank page. The streets are gray but on the yard next to our apartment at least, the ground is still covered in white.




Comments

  1. I never woke E or Z up to feed them...NYU gave me that advice too but I ignored it. Are they crazy?

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  2. The French advice is sound. I used to let her wiggle a bit and only feed her if she went into full-fledged crying. And she's a decent sleeper. Not perfect but decent.

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  3. I never woke my kids to feed them at night, I did wake them during the day.

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  4. NYU has to be insane. I do think the French advice is good. I guess in the beginning there's the fear that babies are hungry but not strong enough to wake up. Also post-epidurals some babies can be overly drowsy. Rhonda - are your kids good sleepers now?

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  5. I fed my kids on a schedule of 2 hours during the day (so I would wake them)and at the beginning they would wake every 2 hours at night, then it went to 4 hours and then around 6 months they started sleeping 6 + hours, then it got longer. I would give them a final feeding around 11pm.
    Max was always a great sleeper- he would take 2 two hour naps a day- Eli not so much. For a while Eli was getting up every night and we would take him out of the crib into our bed- he was close to 2 so we put him in a bed and then we could lie down with him for a few minutes and then he would go back to sleep.

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  6. Thanks Anon (J) for sharing this info. It's really helpful to hear what other people have done. I can't believe you got them both to 6+ hours at only around 6 months. Seems like you established a really good, consistent pattern. Maybe I wasn't consistent enough during the day. I don't remember having any set schedule at all.

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