Friday, June 13, 2008

The Slumber Dilemma...

Thanks to everyone who was hoping for a long night of uninterrupted sleep for us last night!  Robbie managed to sleep until 5am without stirring!  Then after a quick feed, we slept a little more from 5:30am-8:30am.  I feel like a new person!!!! (Which of course calls for LOTS of exclamation points, much to my husband's dismay.)

Now if I could just solve the nap mystery.  Although Robbie gets tired of me in the evenings (see previous post for more details), he sure thinks I'm a riot during the day.  This kid will NOT lay down for a nap before 2pm!  I don't get it. He's textbook exhausted by 10/10:30am - fussy, rubbing his eyes, heavy lids, snuggling into my shoulder... From that point until about 1pm I spend the day attempting to lull him to sleep for a nap, using every method known to man.  

We rock... we eat numerous bottles... we burp... we sing and hum... we read books... we bounce until our knees threaten to pop out of place...  we change every diaper as soon as there is a drop of moisture in it...  

And after a few hours of being completely non-productive in every sense of the word (he hasn't slept AND I haven't gotten anything else done) I usually resign to watching the food network with him on my lap while I eat a snack to make myself feel better.  

And then it happens.  He falls asleep ON MY LAP.  Today it happened while I was nursing him - that fuzzy Boppy Pillow apparently made for a nice little mattress and off to la-la land he went.  I was literally making a mental grocery store list in my head for the trip we would take after he was done eating, and was getting very excited for the homemade italian dinner I would make with my purchase.

Not going to happen.  He fell asleep somewhere around 1:45pm, and as I type this, he is still sleeping.  After 3 hours of just sitting on the couch, holding my sleeping baby (and watching Paula Deen try to kill us all slowly with her tasty recipes that call for at least 2 sticks of butter and a deep-fryer), I decided I had to get up and do something - anything.  So I carefully lifted the Boppy away from me with him still on it, and tucked him in on the couch.  He didn't even flinch.  


So Robbie continues to sleep, and I continue to not make dinner for my poor husband who will be home any minute, famished from the long work day.   Because I need groceries.  I have learned not to wake a sleeping baby - at least MY sleeping baby.  He looks all innocent while he sleeps, but he's got enough of his mom in him to make him a bear when he wakes up. 

At least he took a nap today!  If anyone has any tips on how to split up the 4+ hour afternoon nap into, say, a 2 hour morning nap and a 2 hour afternoon nap, please let me know!

2 comments:

The Van Rossums said...

Don't worry to much Ashley, there are other husbands that don't get home made dinner in the first year. Rob, I feel for you!!

Dutch

ZFam said...

A bunch of friends recommended (to me) 2 books:
1) The Baby Whisperer and 2) Baby Wise. A good combo of the two worked for both of my kids--who were very different in their sleeping habits--but I've always just set them in their crib (awake). JD had to learn the hard way (it was probably harder for me!), but we evenutually had to let him cry it out a little...but after a day or two of that--it seemd like the problem was solved.

Then again...you may have a baby that just doesn't like naps very much!=)