"To Sleep Perchance to Dream..."

I'm pretty sure I have mentioned before that I do not cry very often, but I think I preface every time I cry with that 'fact', so if I've mentioned it often, maybe I do cry a lot... Somthing to think about... For now I am going to blame it on the crazy hormones post-baby. (Which has literally been my excuse for the last two years!)

Anyhow, I have not gone to my two-week post-partum appointment yet. i was supposed to have it last Friday, but my sister and brother in-law came in for a surprise visit, so I cancelled that one. I rescheduled for this past Wednesday but I missed it. I was going to drop Lily off at my girlfriend's, who lives about 10-15 minutes away from the doctor's office. I had to drive past the doctor's office in order to get to her house, and that was about 14 minutes before my appointment. This meant that I should have been 10 - 15 minutes late for my appointment. But of course I hit a butt-load of traffice getting to my friend's house and then getting to the doctor's. So I missed it. Suck! I contemplated bringing both Lily and Topher to the appointment with me, but there was NO WAY I could manage the two of them. Just getting them out of the car to be somewhere is out of the question. Chris could do it. Sometimes I think that he should be the one staying at home with the kids. But then I have no idea what we would eat or where we would live cause I probably would not bring home as much bacon as he does.

So, the first nights with Topher were AMAZING. His first stint of sleeping for four hours straight came in that first week. Then there were three or four more of those stints. Lindsay, my wonderful sister-in-law, gets really pissed when I tell her that because Gabe has just now started sleeping that long, and he is a whopping 4 lbs heavier than my dinky little baby. I guess I just have turkey-like breastmilk.

Or at least I did... Two nights ago Topher woke up every two and a half hours. No fun. So I got about five hours of sleep that night. Then last night he got up after about three hours of sleep at 12:30am, and then he would not go back to sleep. He would pretend to go back to sleep. But as soon as I would lay down, he would spit out his binky, kick off his blankets, and fuss. I would normally let him fuss for a while before doing anything about it, but Chris just went back to work today (dang I miss him!) and he had to get up at 4:30am. If his life didn't depend on him being alert at work, I probably would have woken him up a time or two last night, but alas, I suffered alone. Though when I talked to Chris this morning, he said he heard the little guy and woke up two or three times, so he didn't have the best sleep either- but he had SOME sleep!
So around 3am, I was getting pretty frustrated. I was trying to find the silver lining in the situation. I came up with 'This is my personal alone time with Topher. No Lily, no other distractions. Just me and my baby boy." But come on! There is a time and a place for that- and it's not between 12 and 3am! Around 3:30, after gently placing his binky in his mouth for the 98th time, I put my head down and prayed for the Lord to make my baby fall asleep. And I felt like bawling like a baby. But I was so tired I couldn't even do that. But tears of frustration rolled down my face as I lay there, and boy did I feel like a weenie. And then Topher spit his binky out again and so I had to get up again. This seemingly endless cycle finally stopped at 4am. What a long morning!

Now moving on to Lily and her sleeping woes. For the most part, Lily is the champion of the world when it comes to sleeping. I think she was out of our room by the time she was three weeks old because 1. she was sleeping for four to five hours at a time and 2. Chris went back to work and he was still on the night shift then so we didn't want him waking the baby up when he got in. But not only did she sleep well at night, but she also slept well during the day. I took her to work with me all the time, and she would nap once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and sometimes again in the evening. It was so wondrous! I got so much done in those days! Then she lost her evening nap- not a big deal. And then she started losing her morning nap. And now we have to pray and wrestle to get her to take at least one proper nap a day. She falls asleep in the car a lot, but now that she is in the front-facing car seat, as soon as you get her out of that thing- she wakes up. If Chris is watching her and she falls asleep in the car seat, he just undoes the whole thing and brings it into the house so as not to disturb her. He's so strong!

So I asked my girlfriend Mary Beth, who is Mother Supreme to two very well-behaved, beautiful and smart little girls, when she started enforcing a regular nap-time for the girls, cause I know they are napping at 2pm every day. My heart sank when she said 'when they were six months old.' Dang it! For some reason I just never thought to put Lily down at the same time every day since she was napping ok on her own. But Mary Beth was very encouraging and told me to just do it now, even with Lily being as 'old' as she is. And she told me to be patient cause there would be a lot of crying and screeming involved for about a week. But consistency was key she said.

We started yesterday. Lily cried for about forty-five minutes, with Chris going in at the half-way point to reassure our daughter that we love her and that we just wanted her to take a nap. She still didn't fall asleep on her own at the end of the forty-five minutes, but she was alone the whole time, and hopefully starting to think about napping. Hopefully. Today was better/worse. I went to the office for the first time with the two kids. Not too bad, especially since Topher slept pretty much the whole time we were there. Poor kid must have been pooped from not sleeping last night... (tongue in cheek people!) Lily fell asleep in the car, and of course when I got her out she woke up. But it was 1 pm, the time Chris and I said we would try to get her to sleep at, and so I put her in her crib despite her cries and protests against it. And she cried for ten minutes and is out cold. Did I cheat? Maybe a little. Did I mean to? No. Not really. Did I win the battle today? Yes. I think so. But have I cheated myself from winning the Napping War? Possibly. I will keep you posted. Consistency... consistency... consistency...

And so that's why I am able to sit here and write at all. Both of the babes are sleeping. Maybe I will join them shortly. I do not care to sleep perchance to dream. I just need to sleep! But I gotta give my props to the Lord. This whole 'having two babies under the age of one and a half and being a big baby myself' thing has really made me trust and hope in the Lord for the simplest things. I NEED Him to get me through the day. And those long long nights! And He does. He is so good!