Apparently I just needed to write about it and get it off my chest because for the last two days Kate has been just fine. A couple of times she looked like she was going to do the tug-and-whine but was easily distracted. It’s been great having my happy, playful baby back!

Though I’m wondering how much of it is because Den has done several nights of baby-duty. While I’m still waking up when she cries (we have thin walls), I am getting to sleep without struggling or worrying or rocking or slumping over as I hold her hand through the crib slats. This is not entirely by design. I’ve tried to do the first night-waking, and when I try she ends up screaming at me for an hour. Screaming! She now throws her paci out of the crib. She thinks it’s funny for all of 5 seconds then she realizes she’s tired and no longer has a paci and starts shrieking. And it’s an ugly catch-22 for me, since if I retrieve the paci and give it back she continues to throw it, but if I don’t then I know she will not fall asleep. But if I send in the husband? The kid lays down and falls asleep. Sometimes it takes a little more than that, he needs to walk and rock her at the midnight waking since she’s used to getting nursed at that time. But without fighting she goes back to sleep, and he puts her down and she stays asleep. He reports that several times during the night she’ll sit up, peer over the bumper to check that he’s there, then lay down and go back to sleep. Friday morning when Den had to go to work we switched places while she was sound asleep. When she woke up, peered quietly over the bumper, saw it was me and not Denis, and stood up and screamed for me to feed her.

Clearly at this point me having the boobs is not helping. I’m not used to this. The boobs have always been my secret weapon. They soothe her, they put her to sleep, they are very mama. But now, when she is obviously capable of sleeping all night without eating, she won’t sleep unless she has The Boobs. I know at 11 1/2 months old she’s physically capable of sleeping all night without feeding but I still feel all weird about it, like I’m denying her food. The clincher for me was seeing how well she sleeps all night when Den is in there. If she was honestly hungry she’d scream at him and we would feed her. She’s not, and she doesn’t.

The added bonus to this night-weaning is that I wake up with FULL boobs. She eats her fill and I’m still able to pump off a couple of ounces to put in the freezer (since I was almost out!). As Barb had mentioned in response to my last post, I too was wondering if my supply was declining. But now that she’s not nursing 24/7 and is actually nursing meals again every 4-ish hours I have plenty of milk – actually I could probably pump off more, she must have pumped up my supply during those days of nursing constantly.

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A few weeks ago I decided that my Mother’s Day gift would be a full night of sleep – no getting up with the baby. I knew I’d have to nurse her in the morning but then I fully planned to roll over and go back to sleep while Den spent time with her. It didn’t quite work out the way I’d planned, given that I have actually had several good night’s sleep already now… and the dogs. Forgot about the damn dogs. on weekdays Den’s alarm goes off at 6am and he has a very specific routine he follows. The dogs don’t even bother lifting their head when his alarm goes off, they snooze through his shower and getting dressed. But at 7am when he brushes his teeth they get up, stretch, and are ready to be let out. So you can guess what happened this morning when at 7am there wasn’t a human stirring and Den was still asleep in Kate’s room. The dogs started panicking. I told them to shut up, but they were quite upset and at 7:30 I had to get up to let them out. I don’t know if it’s due to the couple nights of sleep I’ve had or what, but I could not go back to sleep. Oh, but the child slept until 9:15. Very kind of her.

At least I got to read a while this morning, then Den got her up and brought her to me for cuddles and nursing. I think so far that’s been the best part of my day. We layed in my bed together in the quiet blind-filtered morning sun, her nursing and babbling quietly as she touched my face and gave me the brightest, cutest smiles I could possibly imagine. I love love love those moments. Then Den took her to get ready while I packed a small diaper bag for him and they went out for a couple hours. (I asked him if he had a bag packed and he looked at me with puppy-dog eyes and said, “Help??”) I got to shower alone, shave, read, blowdry my hair, get dressed… all without anyone crying or tugging on my pants or throwing my clean laundry on the floor. Not that I don’t love having a little sidekick most of the time, but I have to say it is kind of nice to just be able to not be on full alert all the time.

She was an utter doll when they got back, “talking” to me and playing with all of her toys while we tidied up the house. Then at 11:30 she was standing across the room and out of nowhere she looks at me, pouts, says, “Waaahhhhh” and walks over to me and buries her face against my pant leg. Apparently it was nap time. I put her down and she was out like a light. So weird… and helpful, lol.

Naps have been shifting a little bit, she’s starting to transition down to 1 nap a day. Of course she’s not doing it the way I expected her to do. Instead of losing the morning nap she’s losing the afternoon nap and pushing the morning one back. It’s right in that in-between stage where if she takes a long morning nap (shes’ been going consistently 2 hours) she isn’t tired for an afternoon nap until nearly 5pm, which is our “do not sleep beyond” point if we want to have a good bedtime. So it varies…. a shorter morning nap means she will probably take an afternoon nap to get through to bedtime, but on days like today when she takes a super long morning nap that’s it for the day. Sometimes she doesn’t quite make it to bedtime, but it usually means she goes to bed easy and falls asleep in 2 seconds.

All in all maybe we’re on the upside of this rough sleep thing. Maybe. I still don’t see her sleeping through the night anytime soon, though.