It was last Tuesday night. Well, technically it was Wednesday morning. It was five o’clock on Wednesday morning. Nate had just been fed a bottle around 2:30. I didn’t think he could possibly be hungry again already. I had tried to comfort him in his crib, and managed to settle him for a few minutes. Until I got back into bed, of course, at which time he began to wail again.

“Did you just come from his room?” Graham asked groggily.

“Yes,” I answered. “There’s nothing wrong with him, he’s just going to have to cry for a few minutes,” I went on. I was tired.

Ten minutes went by and Nate still hadn’t gone back to sleep. My patience was wearing thin.

“I’m never going to sleep longer than two hours at a time EVER AGAIN!” I stormed angrily down the stairs to the kitchen to make a bottle.

The next morning I decided it was time. It was time for Nate to try some solid food. I had been keeping track of how much he’d eaten over the last few days and he was averaging about 38 oz. of formula over a 24-hour period.

Wednesday when we got up, I asked some friends for advice about starting to add some solid foods to Nate’s cereal, and I had a few different jars on hand that a friend had passed along to us. I started with sweet potatoes. I mixed them into Nate’s oat cereal about half-and-half.

I expected him to make a face when he tried his new food, and although he definitely noticed something was different, he didn’t skip a beat. He ate it right up. He had some more that night before bed with his bottle.

That night, he slept from 11:30 until 5:30 STRAIGHT, the longest stretch of continuous sleep he’d ever had. Since then he’s been doing pretty well. Most nights he still wants to eat every three to four hours up until 1:30 or 2:00, and then he’ll sleep until 7:30 or 8:00.

He had sweet potatoes every day for four days, and then I tried green beans yesterday, which he also ate up.

I think he’s going to be a great little eater!

I’ve come to the conclusion that motherhood and sleep are incompatible.

I have one friend who has a new baby almost exactly the same age as Nate, and this friend’s baby has been sleeping through the night pretty much since he came home from the hospital. She kids around and says he’s just lazy, but I know she’s just trying to make me feel better about Nate’s sleeping patterns.

I have another friend who had a new baby about a month ago, and this friend also has two other kids who began to sleep through the night around twelve or fourteen weeks.

I keep hearing people tell me, “It’ll get better,” or “He’ll get there soon,” or “You should nap when he does.”

All of these sentences kind of make me want to scream. I know it will get better. He won’t be a ten year old who wakes up every three hours to nurse. I know he’ll get there. All babies eventually figure out the mysteries of sleep and the nights of interrupted slumber become a distant memory for moms and dads.

But in the middle of the night, when I’ve had the longest stretch of sleep I’ll get that night (three measley hours) and Nathan won’t go back to sleep because his tummy is troubling him or whatever else is preventing him from falling back to sleep…when it’s been days, weeks, months now, since I’ve had any real quality rest, when the tears begin to fall and I begin to envision walking away from the house just to find a bed somewhere dark and quiet…that’s when I know it’s time to ask for help.

Like I did last night.

Desperation began to set in so I put Nate back into his crib. I went back into our bedroom and woke up Graham. I told him I needed help. I was beginning to lose it a little. I was exhausted. Without a word he left our room to tend to our son so I could get some rest, shutting the door behind him.

I felt awful. Guilty. Sorry. Like I had that one night in the hospital when our nurse took Nate, screaming, from our room so a sleep-deprived new mom could cry herself to sleep.

Thanks, Graham. I know it’s hard for you, too, when neither Nate nor I are sleeping well. Thanks for being on our team.

Well, the nursing and the pooping is under control, so naturally something else has come along to throw me for a loop.

Sleeping.

Or lack, thereof.

Nate will sleep during the night.  For about three hours, at the most, at a time.  He’s still getting up that often for feedings.  Once in awhile he’ll go four hours at a time.  He always goes right back to bed, so night time is not that big a deal.  I’m getting used to the same sleep pattern as the baby, I guess.

During the day, however, Nate fights sleep like nobody’s business.  There’s too much to see!  And hear!  The stucco on the ceiling is enough these days to distract our little guy from falling asleep.  I’ve stopped sweating the fact that he gets some of his best naps in his swing.  My friends tell me that the crib naps will come later.  That right now it’s more important to get his sleeping patterns established than worry about where that sleep is taking place.  He has had the odd nap in his crib, which I consider a bonus.  Conditions have to be just right to make this happen, however…the perfect storm of napping conditions.  He has to be drowsy but not actively fighting sleep.  I’ll lay him in the crib and putter around upstairs while he fidgets there, and eventually he’ll drop off.

Yesterday he was up during the day for three hours between 3 and 6, which is about the longest stretch he’s been awake.  He would not settle.  He got himself worked up into such a state, nothing I did would soothe him enough to settle down.  The television, the computer, the books on the shelves, the lamp on the table…all too exciting and interesting.  Finally I turned off the lamp, turned off the television, took off my top, took off his clothes and the skin-on-skin and some nursing soothed him enough to pass out.  I almost felt sorry for him.  It seems so backwards to me that babies just don’t know that when they’re tired, they should close their eyes and go to sleep!  He is so much happier when he is rested.

I know, I know, this is just another phase.  The ceiling will eventually just be a ceiling and when he starts eating some solids he’ll sleep longer stretches at night.  My friend Kelly said her daughter started having better naps once she was old enough to really play and be active while she was awake.  The activity would tire her out.

That day is coming.  The crazy thing is, once it gets here I will probably long for these days of early, confusing parenthood, instead.

In Nate’s room, the closet doors are mirrored. When we decided to install mirrored sliders instead of traditional doors on the closet, our intention was to make the room seem bigger, brighter. There’s been an unexpected perk to having those mirrored doors, though.

Late at night…so late it’s actually early, when I open the door to Nate’s little room in response to his panicked, gassy or hungry cries, I get a glimpse of myself in the very act of mothering. In the dimly lit room I sway and rock my little baby son, me in my pajamas, a blanket wrapped lovingly around him, trying desperately to soothe him. We’re a blur together there in that mirror, sometimes because I’m tired, sometimes because my eyes are glazed with tears. And at other times, when the daylight has crept in, we stand and look together into the mirror, into the reflection of one another’s eyes, and I am rewarded with a sunny little smile. The blurry images of the previous night are shoved away into the darker corners of the room, where they wait until the next night to dance with us again.

Last night Graham and I had a conversation about how we could get some more rest for me. So I could “in better spirits.” (I tried really hard not to take it the wrong way when he put it like that. I knew what he meant.)

The solution to the problem seems to be that I need to keep a bottle of breast milk pumped so that Graham can give Nate a bottle when I need some extra rest. And by “extra” I mean more than the 4 to 5 hours of broken sleep I’ve been getting each night since Nate came home from the hospital. I also need to try to sleep when Nate sleeps more often, which has proven to be much more difficult than I thought it would be.

I get the feeling that I haven’t been letting Graham do as much with the baby as he could, and that is totally my problem. It’s not that he is unwilling or unable. He had to tell me last night that when he offered to go upstairs and get Nate from his crib, it would be okay if I actually took him up on that offer.

When did I start thinking that I have to do this all myself? (Is this the way mothers instinctively think?) Especially when there is a loving and capable person right here, who has, all along, agreed to experience and participate in this parenthood gig from the getgo?

Co-ordinating taking care of Nathan is, so far, one of the trickiest parts of having him here in our family. I really don’t want to be a “martyr mom”, and when I have the chance to do something nice for myself, alone, I need to take advantage of that chance, even if that something nice is grabbing an hour of sleep or running out to the grocery store by myself, cranking the tunes in the car the whole way there.

What’s really hard is having to put my physical needs ahead of spending time with Graham in the evening. But if it means that I’ll be a little better rested, and the time we DO spend together is better quality, then I’m grateful that he’s willing to make the sacrifice for now.

The babymoon is over…I’m back at Aiming Low today, where I’ve written about how very awesome a husband and father Graham really is, and how I totally owe him.