So Much for Sleep

The above was taken a while ago, but is a glorious picture of a sleeping baby.

For the past several weeks Jacob has been sleeping from about 9:30PM to 6:30AM, and we loved every minute of it. In fact, we may have loved it too much and became a bit spoiled by it.
Our friends have a baby that sleeps about 12 hours and you have to wake her up in the morning, but we were just happy to get 6-9 hours of steady sleep from Jacob.

All was good until 4th of July weekend. Friday morning started with the same routine of getting up and fed a little after 6, but then because I didn't have to go into work until later I stayed home with Jacob, until Michael got off early and took the afternoon shift. Even without being at daycare, the schedule seemed about the same.

Saturday brought lots of errands (all the stuff I normally spread out over the week while I was home with him, but now need to squish into the weekend). Little Man spent most the day in his carrier in the back of the truck, on top of a shopping cart or at the frogen yogurt shop. We had a couple hours at home followed by a dinner out with a friend and his daughter (who now calls Jacob her boyfriend) and a quick stop at their house.

That was the END of our glorious routine.

After a 4 day weekend for Jacob I learned it is not easy to just take breaks from a routine and ask him to go back to his good habits that we had just spent several days ruining.

Our new routine still starts at the same time every evening that it did in the past, but has a few more interruptions throughout the night. By a few more interruptions...I mean about 4 to 5 short ones, or 2 long ones, or any combination of that.

After waking up at 2:30 to sooth Jacob and keep putting his pacifier in for an hour I was just starting to fall back asleep around 3:30. Then at 4 he started squirming again and was settled in about 10 minutes. Then at 4:30 he started squirming again and 15 minutes into that I gave up and let him sit in his swing vowing to let Michael deal with the next one even if I had to punch him to wake up.

The only problem with this plan is that when Jacob gets to the noise level that wakes Michael it means Jacob is wide awake and no longer in his half sleep area. And if he fully wakes up after midnight he realizes he's hungry and needs to be fed RIGHT NOW! So poor Michael soothed Jacob while I made a bottle and then I finally got a 30 minute nap while Michael fed him.

After several nights of this routine I was cranky this morning. That lasted until I got a shower and woke up a bit, then I felt like the worst mom on Earth because I had pushed off helping my son and gotten cranky with him.

Even when Jacob was only sleeping hour stretches I never did that. I know he can't help it yet and he is too young to spoil right now. If he cries he needs us, and most his night fussiness is due to gas which I know is painful for him. I can't help but think if I didn't have to wake up to go to work - if Jacob was my job - that wouldn't have happened last night.

I'm looking forward to getting Jacob back in his schedule, especially if there is any chance of me feeling comfortable with moving him to the crib. Most of all though I'm looking forward to being done with the mall and having a couple weeks of full-time Jacob duty before starting the next adventure.