(no subject)

[rivka]

Colin was up all night. Literally. From 12:30 to 8, the longest he was asleep at a stretch was 30 minutes. That meant that the longest I was asleep at a stretch was 15-20 minutes. He didn't seem to be hugely hungry, although he nursed a lot in a not-very-dedicated fashion. He just couldn't sleep. It's a good thing that he won't remember any of the things I called him.

Today, naturally, he's been incredibly sleepy. I keep trying to wake him up, mostly by putting him down in the Pack-n-Play, figuring that either it will wake him up so he'll be sleepier tonight or it will help him learn to sleep more soundly when he is not actually lying on my upright body. Inevitably he wakes up within minutes of being put down. Then I nurse him, and after a brief feed he gets drowsy and falls asleep in my arms again.

Do you know what that last paragraph means? It means that tonight is probably going to be a lot like last night. And tomorrow Alex is home, which means no naps for me.

(Before you suggest the obvious solutions: yes, I did try having him lie in my arms last night, although normally for safety reasons we prefer to have him in a cosleeper set in between me and Michael in bed. It didn't work. Also, not only can't I nurse in my sleep, I can't seem to figure out how to nurse lying down at all. The angles don't seem to work right, and it's hard to get set up so that Colin can breathe.)

I did nap for an hour or two today, but mostly I have had to be up doing work stuff. One of the most hated and stressful parts of my job, made even more stressful because it involves an entirely new bureaucratic system which I am having to learn as I go along. And because a strict deadline is involved, and meeting the deadline will require things to be done by other people who are not under my control, and some of those things have turned out to be surprises. And because I would have had this done before I went on maternity leave, if it hadn't been for (a) bureaucratic screwups, and (b) bad advice from the person who supposedly knows the system and was supposed to be guiding me through it.

Working from maternity leave is really, really awful.

Comments

[castiron.livejournal.com]

With my first child, it took several months before we finally got the hang of lying-down nursing. #2 picked it up much faster, but for the first month it was still a bit awkward.

So yep, it's possible that it'll get easier to nurse lying down as C gets bigger and gets more muscle control.