poor john has been sick all week. nothing too major, just that cough/cold combination that makes adults feel miserable - and i'm sure from his seven-month-old perspective it's even worse, since he doesn't even understand why he's so miserable. and i suppose he doesn't know if it will ever get better!
he went to daycare on wednesday and did ok, but yesterday he was running a fever so they sent him home. (his first-ever fever, it's worth noting.) the great news is that i think that little bit of fever was what he needed to kick the cold - he was playful and energetic all evening, happy and not coughing and sniffling nearly as much. the bad news is, being sent home with a fever means he can't go back to daycare until monday. so today we're taking shifts - i'm here with john for the morning, and my husband works a half-day on friday so he'll be home with him while i run to work for the afternoon.
this whole cold thing, by the way, has not helped our sleep deprivation one little teeny bit. the past week it's sort of all come to a head, with john and i up every 1.5 hours at MOST every night. i don't think we'd gotten more than 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep in three weeks until wednesday night.
wednesday night i was at wit's end, and we decided to try adding some rice cereal to john's night-time milk. a change of bedtime routine - he normally nurses before bed, and he'd have to take a bottle. but he didn't argue, happily took his rice-cereal-milk, and crashed. and you know what? he slept from 1130pm to 230am. nursed at 2:30 and slept til 5:30. nursed at 5:30 and slept til 7:15 when i had to get him up for school.
that may not sound like much, but i was feeling GREAT yesterday after two three-hour sleep sessions with only one little wakeup in between. the rice cereal had worked!!! i just about danced through the day.
but last night at bedtime, a snafu. he wanted NOTHING to do with a bottle. not from me, not from daddy. screamed, arched his back, cried, wiggled, hollered, squirmed, spit out the nipple. i felt like i was waterboarding my son. eventually i gave up and nursed him. "oh well," i thought. "we'll try again tomorrow ..."
by some act of god, though, he slept the same last night as he had on wednesday night. he was a little harder to put back down after our 3am feeding, but he slept for two three-hour stretches. and since i was staying home this morning, instead of getting him up for school i brought him into my bed to snuggle, and he's still sleeping there right now at 9:30 even as i type.
this is good on many fronts. 1) maybe we're finally getting out of the every hour pattern (maybe). he definitely was only waking up when he was hungry last night - and since he's been sick he's been eating less at a time, so he probably gets hungry quicker than when he's back to eating 5-6 ounces at a sitting. which leads me to ...
2) maybe once he's eating larger amounts again, the amount of time between waking will stretch from 3 hours ... maybe we can work towards 5-6 hours? maybe? is that a light i see at the end of the tunnel?
3) of course i can't leave out that the poor fellow is finally feeling better after a week of illness. mommy is happy to take a break from having to suck his brains out every couple of hours.
so i'm being optomistic but realistic, since i've learned in my short time as a mom that the only certainty is change. hopefully we're on the rebound, sleepwise. we'll probably have plenty of rough nights - did i mention the teeth still aren't breaking through, so we still have that to look forward to? but maybe just maybe my "great sleeping" baby is going to make an return appearance sometime in the near future.
a mom can hope.
he went to daycare on wednesday and did ok, but yesterday he was running a fever so they sent him home. (his first-ever fever, it's worth noting.) the great news is that i think that little bit of fever was what he needed to kick the cold - he was playful and energetic all evening, happy and not coughing and sniffling nearly as much. the bad news is, being sent home with a fever means he can't go back to daycare until monday. so today we're taking shifts - i'm here with john for the morning, and my husband works a half-day on friday so he'll be home with him while i run to work for the afternoon.
this whole cold thing, by the way, has not helped our sleep deprivation one little teeny bit. the past week it's sort of all come to a head, with john and i up every 1.5 hours at MOST every night. i don't think we'd gotten more than 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep in three weeks until wednesday night.
wednesday night i was at wit's end, and we decided to try adding some rice cereal to john's night-time milk. a change of bedtime routine - he normally nurses before bed, and he'd have to take a bottle. but he didn't argue, happily took his rice-cereal-milk, and crashed. and you know what? he slept from 1130pm to 230am. nursed at 2:30 and slept til 5:30. nursed at 5:30 and slept til 7:15 when i had to get him up for school.
that may not sound like much, but i was feeling GREAT yesterday after two three-hour sleep sessions with only one little wakeup in between. the rice cereal had worked!!! i just about danced through the day.
but last night at bedtime, a snafu. he wanted NOTHING to do with a bottle. not from me, not from daddy. screamed, arched his back, cried, wiggled, hollered, squirmed, spit out the nipple. i felt like i was waterboarding my son. eventually i gave up and nursed him. "oh well," i thought. "we'll try again tomorrow ..."
by some act of god, though, he slept the same last night as he had on wednesday night. he was a little harder to put back down after our 3am feeding, but he slept for two three-hour stretches. and since i was staying home this morning, instead of getting him up for school i brought him into my bed to snuggle, and he's still sleeping there right now at 9:30 even as i type.
this is good on many fronts. 1) maybe we're finally getting out of the every hour pattern (maybe). he definitely was only waking up when he was hungry last night - and since he's been sick he's been eating less at a time, so he probably gets hungry quicker than when he's back to eating 5-6 ounces at a sitting. which leads me to ...
2) maybe once he's eating larger amounts again, the amount of time between waking will stretch from 3 hours ... maybe we can work towards 5-6 hours? maybe? is that a light i see at the end of the tunnel?
3) of course i can't leave out that the poor fellow is finally feeling better after a week of illness. mommy is happy to take a break from having to suck his brains out every couple of hours.
so i'm being optomistic but realistic, since i've learned in my short time as a mom that the only certainty is change. hopefully we're on the rebound, sleepwise. we'll probably have plenty of rough nights - did i mention the teeth still aren't breaking through, so we still have that to look forward to? but maybe just maybe my "great sleeping" baby is going to make an return appearance sometime in the near future.
a mom can hope.
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