Dec.
28, 1999 - Tuesday
Last night at about 11:45pm, we had a decision to make about Harry's routine.
He'd been sleeping for about 3 hours and we were in bed about to do the same.
The question was whether to wake him - in the hope that after nursing he would
sleep for most of the night - or just let him sleep, probably to awaken at 1
or 2:00am.
We're not sure he has a routine yet, but on many of his evenings thus far he
has nursed for many of those evening hours before going to bed. The pleasant
result is that he's often slept for about 5 hours straight. We think all the
excitement and activity of Christmas may have thrown that emerging schedule
off, but there's no way to know.
For better or worse, and after several doubt ridden new-parent moments, we woke
him up. The majority of advice we've heard suggests that it's usually good to
try to create a schedule so infants sleep through longer periods of the night,
though it did occur to us that a baby going to sleep at midnight on a regular
basis may not be the best schedule to keep. And, on this occasion Harry seemed
to be sleeping particularly soundly. It was half way through his diaper change
before he really woke up. His mother, of course, then had to feed him for another
half an hour before retiring him to his bassinet and he only slept for four
hours.
If we had let him sleep he would have undoubtedly woken us within a couple hours,
so perhaps we just traded a 1:30am feeding for a 4:30am feeding, but we'll never
know. Fortunately babies are fairly resilient and he won't be greatly affected
by our somewhat selfish choice to try and get some sleep ourselves. Unfortunately,
these ultimately minor choices can be major deliberations for new parents.
