Ever since we came home from my daughter’s birth early last month, I’ve been doing the night-time feedings. At first, this meant feeding her every 2-3 hours from 10pm to 8am. Since I’m naturally a night-owl, I very quickly adapted to staying up until 3 or 4am. I’d get up once between 6 and 7am to do one more feeding, and then get up again at 8 or so when my wife came upstairs to take a shower. I’d also go check on my son if he called out in the middle of the night (as 2 1/2-yr-olds are often wont to do… “Daaaaadddyyyy, I want some waaaaaaatttteeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrr…” Ugh.) I’d then put in my earplugs and go back to bed until 2pm or so.
That worked well, but it felt like I barely saw my family. In the last week, my daughter has all of a sudden started sleeping for at least one 5-hour stretch at night, from roughly 9:30pm to 2:30am. I have to go back to work in less than two weeks and I need to get back to a more normal sleep cycle, so last night I decided I’d try to go to sleep shortly after she did and get up earlier.
Heh.
So first of all, I couldn’t fall asleep. I think I finally went to sleep around 11:45 or so, because I don’t recall the clock reading 12:00. My daughter then woke up at 1:48am. I fed her and put her back down at 2:20. I then was wide awake and tossed and turned until almost 4am, roughly at which point I fell back asleep. This time my daughter woke up at 5:04am. I fed her and put her back down at 5:45. She decided she wasn’t sleepy and wanted to be held (or rocked, or something, just not in bed. At least, that’s what I think she was crying about.) Ok, fine. I stumbled around the room for 30 minutes until she did fall asleep. I went back to bed at 6:15. My son woke up at 7:09am saying “Daaaaadddyyy, I want Daaaadddddyyyy…”
At this point I’d had a grand total of 3 hrs and 50 minutes of sleep, in three separate chunks. I went downstairs and checked on my son, who proudly announced “Daddy, I’m awake.” I got him out of bed and woke my wife up to take her shower. I got myself back in bed around 7:45 and then smacked the snooze button twice when my alarm went off at 11:00am.
Let’s see how tonight goes!