March 15, 2000 - Wednesday
Harry is sleeping too much. Hard to believe, I know. Actually, the trouble is not really one of oversleeping, just too much at the wrong time. He's getting in the habit of falling asleep between 6:00-7:00pm and not waking up until some time in the very early morning. Sure, he'll go back to sleep until we get up, but his mother and I would do well to get more consistent sleep ourselves. It also means that I don't see much of Harry when I come home from work.

According to the baby books, this schedule - in fact, Harry's daily nap schedule all together- is fairly normal. The advice is to wake the baby up for a feeding at the parent's bed time. Surprisingly, this has not proved so easy to do. This evening I tried waking him up by handling him, moving him around, lifting him under the arms, and several shifts in position, but Harry was out cold. I suppose I could have poured cold water or slapped him in the face, the normal things you do to wake someone up in a hurry, but that seemed like a greater negative than our lost sleep and not so prudent for a 3-month old infant. His mother finally did the almost 100% successful wake-up dirty trick of changing his diaper. Harry was not pleased and didn't eat enough after that to last through the night.

Friends say we should enjoy the oversleeping while he can, because soon he won't sleep enough. I don't know: it doesn't sound like comforting advice to me.


Comments, opinions?