Six weeks and what a mishmash of emotions.
On the one hand... we're really very close to being regular in her feeding schedule. The biggest hiccups come when I don't have Amelie's notebook in front of me and thus, forget when she last ate and screw up her next feeding time. Otherwise, it's rare, now, to have to make her wait more than a few minutes from waking up to feeding time. She's got it. Every three hours.
On the other hand: nights. Also every three hours. And I think Calliope was doing a six hour stint at night by six weeks. And the feedings and burpings and such still take the better part of an hour. So I'm tired. Really, really tired. Because sometimes it takes a lot longer. Girlfriend hasn't figured out how to coordinate the muscles in her abdominal area and so she goes days without pooping and gets really uncomfortable. Especially at night. And so she will be asleep in my arms, or so it appears, and then suddenly jacknife in my arms and snap her eyes open again. And if I've already been rocking and jiggling and swaying a while, especially at 2 am, that's pretty disheartening.
However, I've noticed something funny about her. As strange as this sounds, she seems to have a strange sort of separation anxiety. Often, as long as she can see me, she will stay quiet in her bouncy seat or RnP, swaddled and sucking on a pacifier, until she falls asleep. But if I go out of her sight, she screams. I'm not sure if this is a new development or if I just hadn't noticed until the last few days. I suspect the latter. But last night it meant that I could put her down awake in the RnP and just rock it, eventually while lying down, instead of rocking her to sleep in my arms and finally, gingerly transferring her and praying desperately that she didn't wake up.
So that's huge. Going to sleep on her own is an amazing development. It's not all the time, but it's definitely happening some of the time.
And now it's 8:30 on the dot and she's just started crying from my room so I'm off to do a dimly lit bath and feeding before, hopefully, a slightly longer stretch. One can hope.
6 weeks! That is such a big milestone. Here's hoping that you are very close to more sleep.
ReplyDeleteOh, the sleep deprivation... The worst part of the whole newborn phase. I had to do the rock to sleep and then transfer routine with Jordyn, too. Which was fine for a while, because once asleep she'd sleep through the night, like 10 hours or whatever. Until she was a year old, and started waking up many, many, many times a night, and just WOULD.NOT.GO.BACK.TO.SLEEP for like hours on end. So I'd have to rock her to sleep repeatedly, all night long. Ferberizing put a quick stop to that. Hardest thing I've ever had to do, but worked, worked well, and worked quickly. Not that you could do that now, of course. But if she keeps up this jiggle-me-to-sleep routine, you could do it eventually, if you chose to. Good luck - hopefully she'll start sleeping for a longer stretch very soon!
ReplyDeleteMy boys did not sleep six hours at night until they were over four months old. I tried everything. My younger son did not sleep thru the night consistently until 15 months. It's crazy hard, I know.
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