Dec.
22, 1999 - Wednesday
The sleep thing: The first night we didn't sleep much, especially during the
first few hours when Harry didn't seem happy. The second night Harry slept for
4 hours in a row. We'd have thought something was wrong except Harry's mother
recalls an anecdote of her own mother's similar fears causing her to wake her
baby during the night. Later her doctor marveled "you woke your sleeping baby
in the middle of the night?!" With that insight we were able to rest comfortably
and got a reasonable night's slept for the circumstances. Last night was a mixed
bag. Harry was fabulous. He slept for more than 5 hours in a row, but for some
reason his mother and I kept waking up every two hours. What's up with that?
Larger babies seem to sleep better, we're told, because they have more reserves
to keep them from being hungry all the time. Perhaps that's a fair trade for
the extra trouble during labor. Harry does like to eat, though, when he's awake.
He goes through these marathons of as much as 4 hours of seemingly constant
nursing. Sure, he takes breaks in between to rest, but just when we think he's
had enough and is fading off to sleep he'll wake up and start gnawing at air,
his shirt, or anything else around. Sometimes if he's been away from the milk
table too long and neither air nor shirt gnawing is bringing on the milk fast
enough, he'll start a very amusing hyperventilating-like snorting noise that
gives us quite a kick but definitely gets him where he wants to be. Today in
one of his aggressive modes dive-bombing at mommy, he wasn't well positioned
and completely missed the target by an inch or so. Undeterred, he nonetheless
tried his best from there before repositioning.
