Uneven and Unnerving

 Or, the sleep entry. 

We came home on a Friday. My mom insisted on coming to help us, which was useful. Hilariously, a Baby Journal I’m filling in asked for what memorable moments happened on the way home from the hospital. Um, nothing - we literally live five minutes away. 

We settled onto the couch quickly. We have two cats, and a lot of people have wanted to know how they’ve handled Lily. One of our cats is a little more independent than the other, so he just went about his business as usual. Our other cat lives to sit on our laps and cuddle with us. She was quick to climb onto my lap and sat right next to Lily, back to back with her. This is something she has continued, particularly while I’m feeding Lily and have her on the Boppy nursing pillow.

In the hospital, Lily slept amazingly well. She slept a lot during the day and was extremely quiet. We definitely thought we had a perfect baby situation on our hands. But the Friday night we came home, we slept kind of like garbage. It wasn’t necessarily that Lily was awake and fussing that much, but every time she made any sort of noise, Jon jumped out of bed to look into the bassinet. We had no idea what noises are typical for newborns to make in their sleep. This, we discovered, is the downfall of not keeping your baby in the hospital room with you. The nighttime routine is totally new and unsettling at first. You can Google typical newborn noises till your heart’s content, and the general consensus is newborns make a lot of noises in their sleep. But different articles describe typical versus atypical noises differently, so the entire process is confusing and concerning.

Both Friday and Saturday night, one or both of us brought Lily out to the couch somewhere in the vicinity of 2:30 AM. I threw on some quality Netflix viewing during my feedings – Nailed It! or Gilmore Girls. It’s hard to watch something you’ve never seen before while constantly trying to assist your baby with eating. I also found during those times on the couch that Lily slept well while cuddled against me. And I felt a little bad about it, but after she fell asleep, I would do the same. In the hospital, there were signs about not falling asleep while holding your baby. However, I felt secure sitting up with her on my lap and the Boppy pillow behind her. I never slept for more than 15 to 30 minutes, but that seemed to at least relax Lily so I could bring her back to the room and put her back in her bassinet without her fussing.

By the way, even though this is frowned upon by experts, as you might drop your baby or accidentally smother them against your body in your sleep, oxytocin is released during breast-feeding, which makes you tired. In other words, a woman’s body is hardwired to fall asleep while feeding her baby. So if this is our biological impulse, how bad can it be? I’ve also talked to everyone I know with children, and they all agree they’ve done this. Sometimes there is no other option, and sometimes it just happens. No one I know has harmed their baby this way. Yes, it is possible, and the Internet is full of horror stories. But in reality, most people who aren’t doctors seem to feel that as you’re not drunk or high or a fussy sleeper, uou’ll fall asleep holding your baby, and you will be fine.

Luckily, by Sunday, her sleep seemed to regulate again. My parents were over enough, and Jon is so great, that I got to nap quite frequently if I needed it.

Now, Lily is a pretty great sleeper. It does, however take us a while to get her to sleep. It’s like she’s afraid to close her eyes because she doesn’t wanna miss anything. Cue the Aerosmith song. We had two nights that were particularly bad about two weeks ago, complete with inconsolable screaming that it’s pretty heartbreaking to listen to. One afternoon we accidentally discovered that Lily can sleep through hours of shopping trips. 

Armed with that knowledge, we took her to Walmart at 8:30 at night during her first screaming jag. She fell asleep on the way there, slept through the trip, and barely woke up enough to eat when we got home. I mean, she ate a bottle. Somehow. Cuz she never opened her eyes. I guess sleep eating is real. 

The next night, she was getting a little squirrely, so we took her to Target. And there was no sleep to be had anywhere, of course. (facepalm) 

In other words, you think you’ve figured something out! You’re the best! You have a solution up your sleeve! And your baby thinks, Hahaha. Suckers. And changes the whole game on you.

Not long after that, I worried we might want to get her on some sort of sleep schedule. Not a strict one, but at that point, our “schedule” consisted of her sleeping on one of our laps while we finished watching an episode of TV or two. Moving her to the bedroom often meant she’d wake up, and she wasn’t big on getting back to sleep. So how could we fix that? 

Also, were we hindering her development by notputting a rudimentary schedule in place? Seriously. We worry about everything that might hinder her development.

Evil Google to the rescue again! Some people do start a schedule kind of early on, but not every available article is straightforward about when to start. A lot talked about “putting her down,” though what that actually means is sort of beyond me. “Put her down” literally? In a bassinet? Or just let her fall asleep? 

Gotta love the baby jargon. 

One night, we thought we’d try putting her in the bassinet around 7:30 and leaving her there. We set the baby monitor up in our room, let her fall asleep on my lap, and waited about 10 minutes until she was in a deeper sleep. Then I moved as if I were a teenager creeping out of the house, slowly and trying not to make a sound. (Although I never did this as a teen, so maybe that’s a bad metaphor. Are teens faster and more careless with this? Whatever. You get the drift.) It worked! Wahoo! 

Then we sat in the living room staring at the baby monitor instead of the TV we had on. She woke up and was quiet but stared straight into the night vision monitor, so she looked a bit possessed. And after about 5 minutes staring into her demonic eyes, she started crying. 

Argh! Are we supposed to let her cry it out? I don’t know! We listened to the cry for maybe 3-4 minutes before it hurt too much. There’s the CIO (cry it out) school of thought, and then there’s the “You can’t spoil a newborn” school of thought. Like everything else, I guess there’s no right or wrong answer. You have to figure out what works for you. 

We brought her back to the couch and haven’t tried again since. There were a few days where we tried bringing the bassinet into the living room and putting her in it there. That didn’t particularly work, though - but even if it had, what were we thinking?! It’s not on wheels. How were we going to get that back to our bedroom down the hallway? 

By now (at about 5 1/2 weeks), we’ve got a routine more than a schedule figured out. Lily usually falls asleep before we go to bed after she’s eaten, anywhere between 7:30-8:30. Around 9, whoever’s holding her waits on the couch while the other one of us gets cups of water on the bedside tables, feeds the cats, and fills the humidifier. Then we move Lily into the bedroom and I feed her again in bed while we read Harry Potter aloud. (We’re now one chapter off finishing Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stonefor the first time.) Hopefully she falls asleep during the feeding and doesn’t wake up when Jon comes to get her from me and moves her to the bassinet on his side of the bed. Which she usually does. 

Her new trick is babbling when we put her in the bassinet. She tends to do that, even after we turn the lights out, usually around 10-10:30. It’s adorable, really. We’ve decided it’s her telling us about her day. 

Are we sleeping? I mean, kind of. More than most newborn parents would lead you to believe. Once Lily gets to sleep, she tends to go 3-3 1/2 hours before waking up to eat. She doesn’t always go right back, but maybe she does within half an hour. 

We tend to stay in bed pretty late these days. Even though we get a few hours of sleep at a time, the interruptions always make you feel groggy. Sometimes we get less sleep, particularly if Lily starts making weird noises. We’ve gotten honking, whistling, squeaking, and other varieties of sound out of our baby. Jon is still jumping up to check on her when the new sound is made. We are starting to get used to it, whatever that actually means.

We are not talking about him going back to work in a week’s time. We are having so much fun with Lily, and things are easy with both of us home. He’s afraid of how much he will miss her, I’m afraid slightly of having to do what are now two person jobs with my one person. And how big an issue will sleep interruption be when he’s back? I know most women take all the responsibility on when their husbands are working, but I also know my husband, and I know he won’t let me do it. 

One day at a time.