A bad night

Last night was tough. Physically, emotionally, just all in all bloody tough.

My wife and I are still figuring out sleep and feeding rotas, to try and get some semblance of deep sleep in our lives. Google, our source of all truth, recommends to get just under 2 hours of deep sleep a night, and since my wonderful daughter was born 3 weeks ago my record is 33 minutes, with my lowest being 2 minutes - so room for improvement some might say!

Last night my little mystery of a daughter just wouldn’t settle, we took her to bed nice and early at 9:30, there she was in fresh, soft, pjs and a belly full of boob, obviously that meant she had to fill a diaper immediately, so after a quick change and a mini melt down, we’re back at the boob and settling.

This has been the pattern most nights, change, feed, change again (we haven’t learnt that lesson it seems), back to boob and sleep. We’ve even got complacent about being able to put her in her crib by our bed.

Then last night the pattern changed, she just wouldn’t be put down, there was nothing my wife or I could do to settle her except to have her on my wife’s chest - which, while a phenomenal place to be, isn’t great when she is shattered and really needs sleep! I’m also desperate to sleep because I know that in 1 1/2 hours I’m on duty (yes, we’re 2 hours in to an attempt at getting to sleep now!). Anywho, my wife, who I’ve mentioned in incredible, takes our daughter to the nursery so she can sleep in the chair without turning over and lets me get a solid hour of shut eye.

Then my nightmare shift begins, I go in at 1am to relieve my incredible wife, our daughter is amazingly asleep, and even more amazingly I manage to transfer her asleep from my wife’s chest to her crib, and let me tell you, having put my head on both I definitely know when I’d prefer to be! She was due to eat at 1am, but based on her general boob snacking we agreed to wait til 2am. Alarm back on and I take over in the nursery, sleep is elusive though, but that’s ok, now that my daughter is asleep I can believe that it’s a possibility that she will be able to sleep again - oh you naive fool…

2am, I’ve got some expressed boob milk in the warmer ready to go. My girl’s nappy has the blue lines, so we know it’s time for the pre game change (even though I know there will be a post game change, I don’t think I can leave my daughter in her own filth to eat). The bottle goes down a treat, we burp, we bounce, we throw up a little (her, not me), we have the compulsory post feed shart and change. Now its time to fall back asleep, but it just doesn’t happen, over the course of the next hour and a half I try every possible soothing that has previously worked, rocking on knees, cradling and bouncing, pacifier, the superman hold, in the crib with the rocket, white noise, pink noise, even Misty Mountains from the Hobbit didn’t work! And that has never failed!! Not only did nothing work, my wonderful daughter discovered new power in her lungs and a new cry that sounds like someone is poking her with hot irons. Which in turn felt like I was being poked with hot irons. All in all we were both a tad upset!

I’ll admit I lost my mind a bit, I started talking to her as if she could understand me, asking her why she didn’t want me to sleep, I realise writing this in the cool light of day how ridiculous that is. I even went and got my noise cancelling headphones, and decided that if I was calm she would calm down. Two things to note there 1. Lord Of the Rings is a great choice of film for calming oneself down and 2. Apple AirPods Pro don’t block your baby’s cries - which I suppose again in the cool light of day I see as a good thing.

Long and short of it, having taken my daughter to bed at 9:30pm, it’s now 3:30am I’ve had perhaps 45 minutes of sleep, my wife hasn’t had much more and my dilemma is whether or not to wake my wife and get our girl back on the boob. My daughter decides the matter by making a very similar sound to when Gollum has the elvish rope round his neck, and so we wake my wife.

Frustratingly, she instantly settles, we don’t think she even eats anything, she simply, the second she hits the boob, is calm and asleep! I should be jumping for joy, my girl is calm, but all I can see is my inability to sooth my baby girl and be a supportive partner.

Logic is useless here, I completely understand the reasoning, but I feel an absolute need to be able to support my wife and help her get some sleep.

My big learning and theory here, is not to wake my girl for a feed if she’s deeply asleep, she only deeply sleeps for a few hours at a time, so she’ll never starve, and now that her weight is on the rise, we should potentially relax a little on the every 3 hour schedule.

So the mystery continues, new strategies will emerge, we’ll attempt the not waking her theory tonight and see if more sleep can be found!