Ugh.
Two nights.
Two nights is all the 6+ hours of sleep lasted. I even knocked on wood—a few times—but it apparently didn’t help.
You see, I thought “Since he has slept 6+ hours for two nights, I will keep him up a bit later, then put him to bed around 11 or so, which means he will sleep until 5 or 5:30, at which point I could technically get up for the day (about the time Tom gets up).”
Ha.
Ha ha.
Nothing went as planned. XX(
Owen fell pretty sound asleep, downstairs, after his 7:30 bottle (which was about 8:30, the time we’d normally start putting him to bed). So I let him nap, thinking that he wouldn’t sleep that long, and even if he did, it would really only be a nap—he takes naps all day and doesn’t sleep that long.
So come 9:30 ❗ I started waking him up, because we had to start his last bottle—remember, the process takes about an hour to an hour and a half. Well, he woke up, but he wasn’t really UP up. So I go up to his room to feed him his bottle and he did pretty well…for a while. He was being a little cranky—squirmy, not wanting the bottle, crying, etc. and I was still dealing with him when Tom went to bed at 10:30.
The next hour was spent trying to feed him, burp him, and calm him down, all while getting clawed with those little baby daggers people call fingernails. It was 11:30 when I was finally getting to bed. It took TWO HOURS to get him to sleep.
BUT! I thought… at least he will sleep for 6 or so hours, right?
Ha.
Ha ha.
If only.
I heard him stirring around 1:30 but let him fuss a little and he was fine. At 3am I could no longer ignore it, and got up to feed him.
He sucked down the bottle pretty well, but then…spit up. Quite a bit. Wonderful. (We have almost gotten rid of that for the most part, with more-often burping while feeding, but it’s not foolproof.) So that was frustrating. Then he was fussy and didn’t want the bottle. Then he wanted to eat more, but he was still so squirmy it was hard to give him the bottle. I tried to burp him and that didn’t work. Finally he took most of the bottle and I burped him and he calmed down…so I swaddled him (fighting through the first few minutes where he doesn’t like it), rocked him, and put him down. He looked so dead tired, sweet, and innocent.
If only.
Then I started to pump (I only need like 10 minutes) and I think I got to maybe minute 6 before he was squawking and too restless for me to ignore (of course, I can’t see him, so all the noises he makes sounds ever more wretched and I imagine the worst—like he’s spitting up gallons or choking or something). So I hurriedly quit pumping, put myself back together, and retrieved him. Now he got the hiccups. And wouldn’t give me a burp. But wanted more milk. But was still almost too squirmy.
ARGH!!!! >:XX
And just when I thought things were going well, and he was calming down? He’d spit up. Then he pooped. (He hadn’t pooped all day so I was kind of expecting it, but it still was something I didn’t want to deal with in the middle of the night, as it requires more light, LOL.) So I let him go for maybe 10 or so minutes, to make sure he was done…so I changed him. Fed him some more…got him calmed down…and damn if he didn’t POOP AGAIN!! THE DEVIL!
When all was said and done, between all the spitting up and poopy diaper changes and everything else, I was up for TWO HOURS with him. I made it back to bed just as Tom’s alarm was going off. He apparently thought better than to ask me how the night went (which he usually does). |-|
So, the sweet little thing that slept for 6 and 6.5 hours the previous two nights—and who had gone to sleep fairly easily in the first place—had decided that 3.5 hours was plenty.
He did end up sleeping about another 3 hours after that, but two stretches of three hours each is NOT the same as one long stretch of 6 hours. So I will be MUCH more cranky today than I have been the past two days.