Friday, April 05, 2013

Downside of a sleeper

My LilMiss was and still is not a great sleeper. Nature vs nurture? Probably a little of both at play here. But as a full time working out of the house mom, that suited me as I was her night time parent so the hubs could recover to keep up with her during the day, after all I was just sitting at a desk using my brain, that doesn't require much sleep. (I kid!)
She nursed a lot through the night until she was over a year old, and she was in our room until almost 2. Even though I wasn't with her much of the day, i still had the night time. We were fine that her bedtime became later than most kids her age as that gave me time with her. I fed her dinner, we'd play a little, bathe her, and have a long bedtime routine. She's a great cuddler! Alas, now at almost 3 she still wants us there as she falls asleep which is adorable and sweet but not always practical because someone will generally fall asleep in her room with her and that leaves no adult time, house work time, free time for us.

Enter Little Dude, who isn't one of those sleep through the night the day they come home kids, but he does sleep way better than LilMiss. The bummer for me is, he is ready for bed around 6 or 6:30 and I've only just gotten home. Hubs usually has him cleaned up, in an overnight diaper, all slathered in diaper cream and in jammies as I walk in the door. I take him and play for a bit and then it's generally a half way decent nursing session before he passes out. If I'm lucky, I'll have gotten home early enough or Dudes has taken a later afternoon snooze, that I can cook dinner for everyone else before Dudes is beside himself tired.

LilMiss was never successfully in a crib so she was in our bed or in her own bed in our room. Lots of cuddle time, kicks in the head, gut and other sensitive parts, and screaming jarring nightmares about her falling out of bed. She'd wake 3+ times a night, crawl over and cuddle my head and fall back to sleep...holding my head.
Dude is in a crib. Doing it differently. He does wake most nights at least once, but that is purely a 'FEED ME' time and he goes right back to sleep. Some nights I let him sleep in my arms before putting him down, or I'll pull him into bed with me but I don't sleep well like that. With LilMiss, her continuing to bedshare seemed necessary. This guy, we all sleep better with him in his crib.
But am I missing too much? Sure, I'm sleeping more (sorta - thank you insomnia) but am I going to regret being so absent during this phase? Will we not have as tight of a connection? Is sleep really that important? (Don't answer that)

Thursday, April 04, 2013

Hello old friend/enemy

And here I am, 1:30am on a work night and I'm once again not sleeping. Insomnia has always been a battle of mine and usually triggered by stress. Guess this means I'm stressed. Yay.

It's fairly lonely and I almost want to wake the baby and feed him or something so I feel like this not sleeping is somewhat productive and that maybe his cuddly warm snuggles will help me drift off to sleep.

Since waking a baby, who is finally starting go sleep through the night (hallelujah!), is crazy talk, tonight I opted to read some of the 100s of unread blog posts in my reader feed before Google decommissions Google Reader and remember back to the days of my bloggy community. Part of me misses the community, part misses the improvement of my writing, there is the ever popular therapy aspect, and now that I have kids I miss the sharing and documenting of their awesomeness.
So as usual, I turn to blogging when insomnia hits hard and I write yet another post about writing posts and not sleeping. Maybe that's my new theme. Woo. Exciting stuff. Don't you want more?

Well I guess that was enough for my brain because now I'm yawning and as the sleep experts say with regards to getting babies to sleep....watch for the cues and don't miss the window!

Hope no one else reads this because they aren't sleeping when they should be.

Sweet Dreams!