Sniff, Snort, Slurp

I have the noisiest sleeping baby on the face of the earth.

You look at the sleeping angel face with the long lashes, soft skin, fluffy downy blond hair, and rosebud lips, and cannot even comprehend that those phlegmy, vulgar, unladylike sounds could possibly be coming from such a perfect cherub. It’s my own fault, I suppose. She seems to have inherited her snoring, sleep slurping, general sniffiness from me. It’s a bit less noticeable in an adult, but in a small baby, large noises like that are somewhat incongruous.

I was particularly aware of her sleep sounds last night, as she had yet another fussy night and I spent most of it sleeping on the couch downstairs with her in my arms. Or rather, NOT sleeping on the couch downstairs with her in my arms. I can sometimes get her to fall asleep just enough that as long as I don’t move (or breathe too deeply), she’ll stay asleep. But the slightest movement will cause her to wiggle or cough or cry. So I lie in the dark, wide awake, every muscle tensed, listening to her breathing to see when she might be sleeping deeply enough that I can move my arm which has currently fallen asleep pinned underneath my body. And instead of quiet, calm, measured breathing, I hear slurping, snoring, wheezing, and sniffling.

She’s not a pretty sleeper.

And yet, when she sounds so uncomfortable is when my mothering instinct kicks in the most. One tiny cough, and I’m propping her into a more comfortable spot to clear her congestion. A few slurps and my finger is in her mouth to ease those sore gums. A sniffle or two and I’m wiping her button nose with a tissue. A slight wheeze and I’m making sure her head isn’t cocked at an awkward angle. General wiggling will buy her rocking and a series of lullabies. And as much as I don’t like it, I like it. In fact, I love it.

How can you not love the chance to calm an uncomfortable baby? How little of a sacrifice is your own sleep when it means your baby is peacefully slumbering? And what is more wonderful than watching a beautiful sunrise with a finally sleeping baby breathing slowly and deeply on your shoulder? Those few moments of quiet serenity are worth every hour of wakefulness listening to gurgling and mewling and tired, sad whines.

And when that sleepy baby wakes up and looks at you with a big “good morning” smile? Priceless.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Ryan has always been a good sleeper. He started sleeping through the night at 10 weeks and hasn’t looked back – he’s been sleeping 10 to 11 hours a night for weeks now. His morning nap is rarely less than two hours and his afternoon nap is often more than an hour. He sometimes fights those naps, but once he goes down he sleeps like a log, no matter where he is.

Lately, though, he’s been getting twitchy in his sleep, especially when he’s first falling asleep. The other night he was making noises in his sleep for a while. I went in to see what the trouble was and he was squirming and wriggling and even lifting his head, but his eyes were closed tight and he was very definitely not awake. I rubbed his back for a minute and he calmed down and relaxed back into a more “normal” sleep. I had to laugh because Herb occasionally talks or mumbles or squirms in his sleep, and I can often calm him down by rubbing his back as well. So was Ryan having a dream, just like Daddy does? And what is it that a baby would dream about?

He often plays in his crib when he wakes up, so I wonder if he’s dreaming that he’s awake and playing in his sleep.  

His little brain is continually busy these days, seeing and hearing and smelling new things all the time, learning new skills, processing everything that he takes in. It would be no surprise at all if his mind is taking advantage of sleep time to process more information! Maybe this is a sign that we have a very creative, imaginative, and thoughtful child on our hands.

Or maybe he’s just dreaming up all the different ways he’ll be able to get into trouble when he’s bigger.

Early to Bed and Early to Rise...

...makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. So said Poor Richard, aka Benjamin Franklin.

That may be true of a man, but for a baby, early to bed and early to rise makes for a cranky momma. Unless she is lucky, like me, and wonderful Daddy got up early with the baby this morning and let her sleep in.

Ryan doesn't really have a set daytime schedule yet, but he is falling into a nice nightime routine of tubby time at 8pm or so, followed by one last bottle and then bed at 9:00 or 9:30. He generally sleeps straight through till 7:30, no matter whether he goes down a little earlier or a little later. But every once in a while he throws us off by either getting up as early as 6:30 or sleeping as late as 8:00. Sleeping till 8 is just fine by me, and I'd love that if he'd do it every day. But that hour between 6:30 and 7:30 is a killer. I think the minutes prior to 8am automatically double in sleep value. So missing that hour is like missing two hours at another time.

During the day, I can sometimes manipulate his nap length by getting him to play really hard beforehand and then giving him a big bottle. Physical exhaustion + food coma = up to a 3-hour nap, hooray! But at night, he seems to be less flexible. I'd love to know what it is that tells him it's 7:30 and time to wake up. The neighbors leave for work at 6:00 (poor souls) so it's not the sound of their car engine starting. The sun rises at roughly 6:30, so it's not light creeping through the blinds. Heaven knows, it's not Daddy and Mommy's alarm clock that he can hear down the hall! I guess it's just some secret ingrained genetic clock, the same thing that tells the swallows when to return to Capistrano or the salmon when to start swimming upstream or the grizzly bears when to come out of hibernation.

So there's probably nothing I can do about it but get to bed a bit earlier myself. After all, if early to bed and early to rise makes a man (or woman) healthy, wealthy and wise, Ryan's just helping nudge me towards perfect health, piles of riches, and the wisdom of Solomon!

That's Not Silence, It's the Sound of Angels Singing

Last night my Little Man was so pooped that we put him to bed early - he was out cold by 10:30 (he usually goes down closer to midnight). We stayed up taking down the Christmas tree (I think I could have made another whole tree from the needles I swept up afterwards) and as I plopped into bed a little after midnight, I wondered if I might as well just stay up, since I was sure he'd be waking me up in a matter of minutes. And sure enough, at about 12:45 I heard a few seconds of fussing. I laid in bed waiting for the fussing to turn into a full-fledged wail, but he quieted himself down and I drifted off to sleep again. When I woke up again, it was still quiet, so I rolled over to see what time it was: 5:45!! I thought to myself, good heavens, I must have been so exhausted that I slept through his cries and Daddy got up and fed him. But then I started having typical new mom (read: insane and panicky) thoughts and considered getting up to check on him. I convinced myself that they were just that, insane thoughts, and he was fine - I convinced myself for about 15 minutes, that is. At 6 I couldn't stand it any more and I tiptoed in to listen to him breathing. And I noticed that he was sleeping on his tummy, which is how Daddy had put him down at 10:30. Before I get a spate of angry e-mails quoting the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the "Back to Sleep" campaign, let me say that we generally do put him down on his back. But there are times when he just won't go to sleep on his back, and since he's strong as an ox and can lift himself up and turn his head when he's on his tummy, every once in a while we do put him down that way. But I don't think we've ever put him on his tummy for two sleep sessions in a row, which is how I knew that he had, in fact, been sleeping for an uninterrupted stretch of nearly 8 hours! Alleluia!

I am not so naive as to assume that this is a new habit and not a fluky one-time occurrence that won't happen again until kindergarten. But the fact that it happened once means it is possible, and therefore it WILL happen again at some point, even if it isn't tonight. There is a light at the end of the tunnel!

But now comes a new dilemma: when Daddy got up at 8 and realized he hadn't gotten his usual early morning bonding time, he gave me the saddest puppy-dog face I'd ever seen on him. So when Ryan is consistently sleeping through the night, will we start racing each other for the early-morning snuggle time? I suppose that's better than the stereotypical midnight "It's your turn to feed him" "No, it's YOUR turn to feed him" argument. (Which we've never had, by the way, although there have been a few "I'll get him" "No, I'll get him" debates, which Daddy generally wins, mainly because he has the side of the bed closest to the door. But I digress.) And I guess it's only fair that Daddy wins that one most of the time, since I get to have him all day long while Daddy is off to work. In fact, going 8 hours last night without snuggling him, even though I was sleeping for most of that time, made me realize how much Daddy must miss him during the day!

Hm, sleep vs. baby snuggling. I guess I'll have to think of that as a win-win situation.