I Go (Sleep)Walking After Midnight

I haven't had a full night's rest in months. I think I should be delirious and delusional by now. Brady has only been here for five weeks, so it's not all from midnight feedings. I could hardly sleep at all in my ninth month of pregnancy. That doesn't make my lack of sleep any easier to accept.

Speaking of "midnight feedings"... what a lie. They are more like, 1 A.M., 4 A.M., 6 or 7 A.M. feedings. I think we are slowly teaching him that nighttime is for sleeping and daytime is for play. We try to get him to "talk" to us and to smile and play during the day. He gets tired easily and overstimulated quick. He's young. We just aren't expecting too much from a 5 week old baby. Just taking it one day, er night, at a time.

I try so hard to get him to take his last feeding around eleven o'clock at night so that I MIGHT get to sleep until 2 A.M. It never seems to happen. He will take a half ounce here, two ounces there, until around 10:30 P.M. He seems to know my ploy, and he's not having it. Crafty little bugger.

It's going on a couple of months of little sleep and I am strangely finding it bearable. It's really not as difficult as it initially was the first couple of days. That could also be the missing R.E.M. talking. Brady likes to wake me around four in the morning, screaming like he hasn't eaten in weeks. I groggily get the usual 4 ounce bottle and he guzzles about two ounces. I burp him and offer the last half. Now that he's learned to smile on his own, that's when he shows off his dimples. He pushes out his bottom lip and sometimes even spits raspberries at me to show his lack of interest in more food. I have even resorted to turning on the lights and actually loudly speaking to him, "wake up, Brady". All to no avail. Five weeks of this, and last night I finally had an epiphany. Yup, I'm going to make only two ounces at the four o'clock feeding from now on. He will get more if he wants it. For some reason the lack of sleep makes me a bit slow on the uptake. But I'm getting there.

There are some articles I've read that this gets easier every month. Then I read babies don't sleep through the night until six months, or even up to a year. If I have to go through this for a year, I MIGHT go insane. No promises, I might already be there and in denial.