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Thursday, September 20, 2007

Uncircadian rhythm

Bedtime is one of Rachel's favorite times of the day. Quite often daddy comes home right around bedtime, so that's usually when she gets her daddy time in for the day. She also gets story time and song time and we read scriptures and say prayer. We put a nightie on her and then fold over the mittens so she doesn't accidentally claw her face in her sleep (sometimes this backfires).

We do a lot of things to get her ready for bed, but I think her favorite part is cluster-feeding through it all. I feel like I feed her almost constantly between 8 pm and whenever she decides to call it a night.

Some nights she'll go to bed without a fight and other nights she pushes us to our limit. (She screamed from 10 pm until 1 am last night). Rachel occasionally sleeps through the night...sometimes she wakes up only once...other times she'll wake up between 2 and 5 times a night. We hate those other times.

So, you see we don't really have a schedule, per se. But we have established a routine of sorts so I guess that's a start. Is it possible to have a routine without a schedule? I don't know.

One of the funniest things that Rachel does is sleep with one eye partially open. It's the best when she's in REM stage because her eye will be spinning around--that's when we call her Mad-Eye Moody.


I'm excited for the time when Rachel will sleep through the night on a regular basis. I often dream of a land far, far away where mommies get to sleep all night long and their babies never ever cry. Has anyone heard of a place like that?

7 comments:

  1. Just thought I'd mention...the way I know we're up for a bedtime fight is when Rachel nurses with her eyes held so wide open that her forehead wrinkles. It's as if she's saying, "There's no way I'm closing these puppies!"

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  2. ha ha, The one eye open thing might creep me out. ;)

    Yes, there is a land where mommies can sleep through the night. I was lucky to get there when Maya was only about 2 months old. It will come soon, usually when they can hold enough food in their stomach.

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  3. Oh Nancy, if you find out where that lovely land is (the one where mommies get to sleep all night long) PLEASE tell me! :) Robby's sleeping through the night as in not feeding at night but still sometimes wakes up and cries for a few minutes. The most annoying times are when he sleeps but I STILL wake up to go to the bathroom or can't sleep... ew. I hate those times.

    You sound like you are doing wonderfully - yes there can be routine w/o schedule. That is my life. :)

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  4. I can think of a particular person who would probably not want his name mentioned, but you know him, Marquita, who did not sleep through the night until 2 weeks before his little sister (you know her, too) was born!! I was soooo tired, and wondering how I would ever be able to give birth to another baby on NO SLEEP!!! That land that Marquita has found and that Nancy and Esther hope to find seemed pretty mythical to me for a couple of years...

    And then I had my last baby who didn't even sleep for 24 hours after she was born, and has rarely slept in 13 years...

    From Guess Who?

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  5. Hmmmm...could that be from my mommy?

    And I agree with Esther...it's pretty annoying when Rach sleeps and I can't. We were actually talking about that dilemma at playgroup this week. :)

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  6. I have found that land of mommy sleep time, since Karen slept through the night at 1 month. However I will soon be saying goodbye to it again, and I doubt I'll be as lucky with this next kid as I was with Karen. By the way, Karen used to sleep with both of her eyes open like that, but she grew out of it around 6 months.

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  7. Nancy the funny thing for me is once Grace started consistently sleeping through the night it got harder and harder for me to wake up if she did need me. One night while Jason was up studying she started wailing and would not stop. He brought her in, hooked her on (to me), changed her side, and then put her into bed all without me even waking up. I think it was the easiest feeding we ever had :)
    PS. I love seeing the blanket on the blog. It makes me feel famous!

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