And here I thought I was being clever (ha!) with the title of this post...but in actuality I'm probably just stupid tired and don't have a good grasp on what's clever or funny and what is not.
Anyway, I believe yesterday I was commenting on how the tired is starting to set in with both Mike and me. Perhaps we were both delusional in thinking that since this is our third baby, that we were pros at this and were somehow immune to it because we knew how to handle things. So actually the first week, both Mike and I went out shopping, to lunch, here and there and had all of these people admiring the baby (gotta love attention that a newborn brings, right?). Inevitably, people ask how we're doing, if we're getting sleep, etc etc. Now, we don't have our OTHER two children with us, so it's easy for people to assume that she's our only/first. That first week we mentioned that she's been pretty good, getting up the requisite number of times, but not making us too exhausted. Yet.
Now, I'll step back for a minute here and say that Kaitlyn has been and was (in the hospital, at first) a combination of the boys. Daniel was a fusser in the hospital, and the first night after he was born I held him all night...or rather had to, otherwise he'd cry. Mike took over that duty the following night (or he took the late night shift while I slept, and I took earlier in the morning). So he made us insane amounts of tired right off the bat. Jared was pretty good. He ate then went right back to sleep, pretty much, in the hospital. He was also under the lights for jaundice earlier on, and maybe the nice warmers made him a happier baby. Kaitlyn started out pretty well. She was born later in the daylight hours (which may have been a factor), and her first night she ate and slept pretty well, again getting up every few hours, but going right back down again. During the day, the following day, she was pretty good as well, having a few moments of wakefulness (but not crying), and mostly sleeping and eating.
The night was a different story...the following night, after midnight (and of course, this is the night that Mike was away from the hospital and spending at home with the boys), she was waking every hour or so, rooting for food (or that's what it seemed), and wanting to be held. Swaddling didn't do much. So I got an hour here and an hour there of sleep...yeah I was pretty exhausted come morning, but I was going home that day, so I figured I could convince Mike to let me catch a nap.
Since then, Kaitlyn has been mostly good (not quite as easy as Jared was, according to memory...he ate, slept, and so on over night...can't really think of a night where it was a struggle to get him back to sleep in a reasonable time), but she has had a few times where she struggled to go back to sleep. But, in general, her pattern is as follows. Go to sleep around the time the boys are going to bed (8:30, give or take). Wake up to eat around the time Mike and I are usually about to go to sleep (11-1am range). Wake up again in the 3-4am range, and then again around 6:30 or so. There are a few things that have made us a little more tired with her, though. First, while she took to nursing pretty well after she was born, staying latched for a good 30 minutes sometimes! After my milk came in, I thought that would be great, but she continued to take a long time to nurse, and often times she'd fall asleep in the middle. Then it seemed like she might be using me as a human pacifier. So the length of time she was taking to eat was keeping me (and us...Mike when he was feeding her out of a bottle encountered this too) up longer. Second, she appears to eat a lot more than the boys. So after she's done nursing, she wants to get topped off with some formula. Add this to her propensity to fall asleep AND take longer to eat...sometimes her feeding routine gets close to an hour!
Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh yeah...sleep. Last night, I went to sleep at around 11:30 or so. She hadn't gotten up by then, and I knew it was a risk, but figured I'd get an hour in there. I actually got 2 hours of sleep, as she woke up around 1:30. No problem. She ate, went back to sleep. Then around 3 or so, she got up again. This time she nursed, but no formula (she went back to sleep). This could sometimes backfire, as she has woken up and wanted more food when she realizes that she wasn't done. Then Jared woke Mike up. And then Kaitlyn woke me up again around 5. I was so tired and lazy that I just popped a bottle in her mouth. Then at 6 she wanted more. It's actually around then that the details get kind of fuzzy...I just know there were bottles, boobs, going out to the kitchen a couple of times, getting in bed and out of bed, and so on.
So by the time that Daniel got up, came into the bedroom and went into our bathroom to use the potty...I was so tired that it might as well have been 2am still. Yawn. The biggest stretch of sleep I got was 2 hours at a time. Usually more like 1 hour here, maybe 30 minutes there. So, yeah, both Mike and I are tired (Mike got more "sleep" in terms of length and duration, but he was sleeping on the floor in the kids room...ouch).
Well, that's all...and I'm here typing this all out when I should be resting, right? I guess we'll wise up at some point!
No comments:
Post a Comment