sleep parenting

During Aaron's first month, I was mostly exhausted because of I was recovering from the whole labor and delivery and its effects on my body. From what our moms tell us, Aaron is a fairly pretty easy baby though. From the beginning, he slept in pretty regular spurts of 3 hours, and even slept 4 hours at night sometimes. I wasn't getting a nice long stretch of sleep, but at least I was getting sleep when I wasn't feeding him or myself.

Now I'm exhausted from taking care of him. He's been fussy and overtired for the past few days. You'd think that would mean that he would pass out and sleep like a log until he woke up hungry or dirty. I wish! Overtired for him has meant that he can't fall asleep easily. No matter how I've held him, he cries and cries until he manages to doze off. But then any little movement or sound will wake him up. We've just been living in a sort of dazed cycle - nap, wake up, change his diaper, feed him, maybe change his diaper again, try to quiet him down (sometimes for hours) and get him to sleep again.

I think being overtired is only partially to blame for his recent spurt of fussiness. He's also starting to become socially aware. He now pushes himself to stay awake to hang out with the moms and pops and whoever else is around. His eyes will be rolling back into his head because he's so tired, but he'll suddenly start and look around to see what's going on. The great thing about this newfound discovery of the world and people around him is that he smiles socially now!



The not so great part is that he cries for attention, wants to be held constantly and doesn't like to sleep by himself anymore. It's tiring, but I just remind myself that he's already grown so much and a day will come when he won't want me around as much anymore, so I might as well savor it while I can. Anyway, I've been trying to hold him until he's asleep and then place him in his crib, but as soon as his little butt hits the mattress, he starts wailing this sad, scared sounding cry. So we've taken to letting him sleep on us sometimes just so we can all get some sleep.

Last night, I awoke to the sound of Aaron's whimpering cries followed by some hollow thumps coming from Isaac's side of the bed. I look over and Isaac is sound asleep and patting his chest, trying to comfort the baby. Except Aaron wasn't sleeping on Isaac's chest. He was in his crib.