The Late-Night Feeding

Happy Monday, at least for parents across the metro area, as school has started back after a rather short 2-week summer break. The summer breaks now are shorter than when I was in school. Then again, we never got a fall break or some other holidays that schools now get. But I digress...

As you no doubt read in the previous post, Little Girl has settled into a nice routine of going down around 10 and getting up between 3 and 4. Although we do complain about this 3am waking, there is really no reason to complain. After all, she could get up at 1am and 4am and 7am. She's nice, however, and lets us sleep 5 or 6 straight hours.

That middle-of-the-night feed is interesting. For one, both Mom/Dad and Baby are half-asleep. Well, actually, scratch that. Baby is usually awake. Mom/Dad are the ones half-asleep. She's fussing, while we groggily find our way to her room. I've yet to run into a wall or fall asleep sitting up in bed (though I came close Saturday). And changing a diaper? I'm just glad I haven't put the diaper on her head been peed or pooped on and then not even noticed. I've told Ginny the next day that I remember getting up and feeding Little Girl but not having a clue how I changed her diaper.

The other thing that is interesting and different is that, to keep the baby quiet and half-way sleepy, we don't talk to Little Girl. Which is hard, because I like talking to her. For the sake of our sleep, however, I only let the sounds of the fan, sound machine, and her sucking noises fill the room.

And THEN we rock, put her back to bed, and hope that she doesn't decide to try and break out of the miracle blanket. At worst, we are up only an hour and a half. At best, she feeds for 15 minutes, decides her tummy is full, and goes back to sleep. Of course the ideal situation is for her to sleep through the night, but we'll have to wait a little while longer for that. Besides, we will happily take the whole getting up once thing, because a lot of new parents aren't as fortunate.

Maybe later today we can actually post her 2-week and 3-week pictures, since, you know, she turns 4 weeks old tomorrow and 1 month on Friday. A month? Little Girl, don't grow up too fast.

-D