Sleeping like a... baby?

So Mr Silas is six months old as of yesterday.  He is a truly lovely little boy... very affectionate and happy.  He is eating real food and drinking my milk like the others did.  He laughs when you play round-and-round-the-garden on his tummy like the others.

And just like the others, he is awakening my parental obsession: baby sleep (which of course morphs into toddler sleep as they get older).  Once again the quality of my day is becoming about how well he sleeps...or as in the case of this afternoon, doesn't sleep... Once again I am wracked with anxiety around whether he is getting enough sleep and guilt that I cannot just 'clear the decks' (like I could when Bede was little) and stay home to get him back into routine, or to let him recover from a particularly busy couple of days...

Today was the second big day in a row... the morning was fine... he woke up late after a night which included an extra feed... he slept on the way to our new church and was good during the service...he slept in the carrier on me for a while, had some lunch and stayed awake in the car... we thought we would put him down for a nap then given that he had been awake for almost three hours by then... but all our efforts were to no avail... the window of sleep had shut, and he got progressively more and more overtired...and less and less likely to just drop off... and more and more grumpy.  In the end, he was so over tired that dinner was a non-event (meaning that he screamed so much he wouldn't eat anything)... the usual calmer downer of the bath didn't work (he screamed through his bath...an almost unheard of occurrence)...and was asleep for the night by 6.15... an hour earlier than usual...

This reminds me why I am so protective of my kid's sleep... lack of it can derail a perfectly nice Sunday afternoon, and a perfectly happy relaxed mood... but it also reminds me that I need to learn  to lighten up a little more... something I thought might have happened by now...three kids later... 

But as Anne Shirley was known to say, "Tomorrow is fresh with no mistakes in it"... or in my case...no skipped naps in it...yet.

What's in a name Pt 2

Life is one of those things that happens while we are thinking about writing a blog post.   Since the last time we met I finished gestating and given birth to the wonderful Miss T.  Last time we met I was bemoaning the difficulty of choosing a girl's name for a baby.  Well as you can tell we chose one...but not without much searching and compromise.

I may or may not post about the actual birth of Miss T...some bloggers like to, but for me the birth was somewhat traumatic...I am happy enough to talk about it, but hesitate to write about it...

The naming of Miss T was problematic for many reasons (mostly covered in the previous post), but mainly because our name list had so many awesome names on it...we simply could not settle on one... So we waited until we saw her...and that didn't help us much!  For a large part of her first day Miss T was nameless and beautiful... and didn't really look like any of the names on our list (in my opinion anyway...).  Luke decided to take charge...he argued that I essentially got to choose Mr B's name and therefore it was he turn to choose...the name he picked was not my first choice to be honest but it has grown on me with time, and I got to choose the middle name (after one of my grandmothers) so I was happy.  The bonus is that both names are Biblical but not obviously so (each only mentioned once each), so we can share that with her when she is older.

There are many joys that come with a new baby: a tiny body to cuddle, milestones to watch out for...that first smile (many sleeping ones, but not a true one until her one month birthday)...but one never associates better sleep with having a newborn.  Well we do.  Since her arrival at home Miss T has never slept less than 7 hours straight in one night, and often closer to 9 hours.  Her first night home, we both woke up at 4 and checked that she was still breathing...when she woke at 6.15 (after going to sleep following a 10.30 feed) we looked at each other and said "it must be a fluke"...after the second night we thought we were lucky but did not expect her to keep doing it...but by the end of the first week at home and no 2 am (or 4 am) feeding calls we started to think that we may have a keeper.  I am very lucky to have good milk supply so I am not technically required to wake her to feed through the night...and now after 5 weeks of life, Miss T has only woken us to eat once...and I thank God for every night of sleep I get because I still do not expect this wonderful thing to continue...