to sleep, perchance to dream.

Now that our breastfeeding woes are (mostly) over, Lorelei and I are onto our new battle: sleep.


Lorelei busting out of her swaddle-wrap, 7 1/2 weeks old

For about the first six weeks, Lorelei was pretty consistent with her sleeping. She would have the occasional off day or two (like during growth spurts), but mostly she would nurse and then go to sleep with a regular interval of 3 hours in between feedings. Sometimes at night she would "cluster feed" and then, starting at about 11 or 12, go for 4 hours, but that was pretty rare.

Then, all of a sudden at about 7 weeks of age, she started napping really poorly. Waking up 45, 30, or 20 minutes into her nap! Because of our breastfeeding issues, I struggled with determining if she was waking up due to hunger. After about a week, though, it's pretty clear that she's doing this because she's sleep-deprived!

Now that she's socially aware, Lorelei wants to be awake as much as possible. When she was only a few weeks old, she would fall asleep anywhere and anytime she needed to so we didn't have to worry about "keeping her up." But now that she is so excited about the world around her, she needs help to get to sleep and we have to watch her every move to make sure that she is whisked into her crib the moment she starts to seem drowsy. This is very difficult to do when you are having fun with her -- especially for dads. :)

The positive side to this is that Lorelei is sleeping much better at night now -- going 5 or 6 hours in between feedings. But I bet she would sleep even more soundly if we could get her nap schedule to even out. As Dr. Weissbluth says, "Sleep begets sleep" -- the more well-rested our little girl is, the better she'll sleep.

It's interesting to me how the science of sleeping gets so wrapped up into parenting styles. Good sleep is good sleep, no matter what kind of parent you want to be. The parent-directed and the attachment parenting "camps" seem to want to point fingers of blame and shame. But no matter if you have your kid on a feeding schedule or have a family bed and nurse 10 times a night, if you put your child in daycare or carry her in a sling all day, she still needs to sleep! There's so much research on the importance of sleep for adolescents and adults -- how could people deny that good quality sleep is what's healthiest for infants, who are in an extremely rapid and fragile state of development?

So we're in crisis-response mode here. Mission: Baby Sleep. It means less playtime with Lorelei temporarily -- but if that means a healthier, happier baby in the long run, that's a sacrifice we're going to have to make!


Lorelei, looking angelic in her sleep on 7/4/2011