Last week Lucy started sleeping through the night.
By which I mean she would sleep until about 4:30am, which is a stretch of nearly eight and half hours and any mother of an infant will gladly call that sleeping through. I of course have now been programmed to wake up at 2am for the last five months, so for the entire week I was waking up between 2am and 3am thinking 'any minute now, any minute now'. Still, she was sleeping well and my heart was happy; angels sang and I started to plan my future sans sleep deprivation.
That was last week.
This week she has inexplicably reverted to her old, trusty sleep schedule of waking at 12am, 2:30am and 5am. I feel like I've discovered the formula for cold fusion and now can't remember where I wrote it down.
I know babies are capricious little F@c!%s, but how? why? I can't stop wondering what was working and now isn't. Was it the perfect combination of humidifier, fleecy sleep-suit and and old pheromoney t-shirt of mine? Or 8pm bottle of breastmilk, fleecy sleep-suit, and fresh air during the day? Gah! After trying a bajillion combinations of the above for the last 5 months I can safely say I have no idea what works and what doesn't, and I was happily ready to believe she had just outgrown the need for boobing in the wee hours. I am beyond disappointed. I know that at some point before college she is probably going to start sleeping all night but I was rather hopeful it would be before I had died of exhaustion....
On a more cheerful note, the reason I haven't left her in a Moses basket down by the river is a) this is Southern California and we don't got none and b) 5 months despite the lack of sleep is such a perfect baby age. They are beautiful and constantly delighted to see you. They smell good, and are small and lovable without the old-man scrawniness of a newborn. Perfect baby-trap age. I'm thinking of having at least a dozen more. *Wow* I really need some sleep.
And finally, The Looper. I've written about nicknames before and it appears we have finally found one that has stuck for Lucy. My second daughter is clearly an athlete like her father. She just turned 5 months old and she is practically crawling. She throws herself around a room with such determination that if you turn your back for 5 seconds (OK, maybe twenty minutes, I never said I was a good parent...) she has maneouvered herself into the fireplace and is chewing on an ornamental log. She is already able to scooch both legs underneath her in a pre-crawl motion and then propel herself violently forward in pursuit of that elusive Barbie shoe of chokeable death. So why Looper? Fans of Caddyshack may have already picked this up, but there is a scene where Bill Murray is terrorizing a young caddy with a pitchfork while regaling him with a story of when he caddied for the Dalai Lama. He jabs the pitchfork at the caddy's neck and says "I was a Looper, you know, a caddy, a jock". OK, I'll admit it's a little obscure but it fits her to perfection. That girl is a jock. Watch out world.
Don't be fooled by the apparent sleep-pose. That eye is half-open. She's watching and waiting....
4 comments:
Your five month old sleeps better than my fifteen month old.
Still, I have also experienced those weeks of a full night's sleep. Whenever that happens, I sleep so deeply that my body is exhausted the next day. It's like it needs a couple of days to recalibrate to sleeping for long stretches at a time. Of course, before that can happen, Squeakles goes back to waking up every few hours.
In any case, I hope that the Looper starts sleeping better soon!
The sleep formula is elusive indeed.
After a long work-induced hiatus, I'm binged on your posts. Lovely and clever as ever. Thanks.
Mack is 34 months and I still rack my brain trying to figure out what it was the week before that created the PERFECT combination of sleeping happily all night long. Was it footy jammies? Or was it NOT having footy jammies and he was cooler? Was it the added blanket? Or was it the fact that he'd kicked off the extra blanket? Was it because he'd had an usual amount of milk before bed and his diaper was wetter that made him wake up screaming? I'm pretty sure I'll never know until he writes his memoirs when he's 50.
5 months is pretty much the perfect baby age. I remember what a pleasant (or maybe more accurately, thank GOD because it is about time)surprise it was when my son turned about 3 months and I began to enjoy him. I know that is mean, but it's true. My husband and I felt like we were in the throes of first love with the baby. We couldn't wait to come home at night to see him. It is a trap though, you are right. I remember 3 to 9 months as an idyllic, wonderful, crush on your baby time. Then it all starts to go to hell again once they start walking...
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