Sleep or lack thereof

First of all, thank you Stacey and Shannon for your awesome comments.  That has made both Jules and I feel a lot better regarding the mommy preference.  Seriously, thank you.

Also, Shannon, thank you so much for your coconut milk recommendation.  It's totally awesome and by far my favourite of the non-dairy substitutes out there.

Now on to my favourite topic - Emily's sleep pattern or lack thereof

Here's what I've noticed:

• She can sleep 1.5 hrs at a time at night without needing to be soothed
• She's always hungry when she wakes up at night.  For that reason I both breast feed and formula feed her at night to fill her up.
• She will rarely sleep longer than 15 minutes at a time during the day without needing some sort of soothing to get her back to sleep (whether it is a quick rock, putting her soother back in or changing her diaper again)
• She is the WORST at self soothing.  She'll be rubbing her eyes and tired as all heck but she just can't seem to drift off by herself.  I've left her for 5-10 minutes at a time to see if she can get the hang of putting herself to sleep but when she gets into the silent scary cry I feel terrible and can't do it anymore.
• Occasionally she'll go for a three hour stretch in the afternoon or evening.  It's almost always at a time when I can't join her.
• We currently don't have a bedtime routine established.  Between Jules working late most nights and Emily's need to be soothed by me and me alone, it leaves us doing everything late and before we know it it'll be 10 pm or later before we're going upstairs to start bedtime.  We really need to work on this but honestly it feels impossible sometimes. :(

As I type this, Emily is sleeping against my chest in the cuddly wrap.  This is after being awake for 99% of the time between 8:30 am and 12:30 pm.  She'd drift off in my arms or on the breast feeding pillow and then wake up after I put her down or within 10 minutes.  It is so damn hard sometimes.  Even in the cuddly wrap she fussed for about half an hour before finally falling into a deep enough sleep that I didn't have to be walking around bouncing her or patting her on the back.

I swear, at this point I'd be glad if she had her nights and days mixed up because at least I'd get some decent naps SOMETIME during the day/night.

Sigh...

2 Months

Another month has flown by and now our little peanut is two months old!  

Some changes this month:

• Increased neck strength!  She's amazing with her head control.
• She follows us all around the room with her eyes.  The distance at which she can see has greatly improved.

• She starts moving her arms and legs to music and movement.  She LOVES her Baby Einstein play gym (for 15 minutes at a time...that's usually her limit) because it has blinking lights and music.  She also loves when we dance in front of her and her giraffe mobile.

• She has started to warm up to the baby swing.  Jules has gotten her to sleep in it for a couple hours at a time in the past week.
• We figured out how to calm/soothe her when she gets super cranky and overtired.  Well, I have anyway... 
• She has a case of mommyitis.  Nobody can calm her like I can.  She'll scream the house down for Jules and poor Jules will try everything she can think of to calm her down but there have been several times where she's had to bring her to me or wait until I've gotten home from an evening errand to have her soothed. :(  This really makes me sad and I totally understand Jules' frustration.  This morning she was at her wit's end as she was trying to let me get a few hours of sleep but Emily wouldn't stop crying.  I end up coming downstairs and as soon as I picked her up, she started calming down.  I brought her upstairs and she fell asleep in my arms within five minutes.  Although I'm so grateful that at least one of us can calm her, I feel so guilty. :(

• She's begun experiencing constipation which I contribute to her being half formula fed.  Poor girl.  We've started adding a bit more water to her formula bottle and last night we resorted to using a baby suppository to help her go (it worked within 10 minutes!)
• She's had baby acne for the last three weeks.  It seems like every day it is somewhere else on her face/neck/head.  It takes days for spots to go away but I found if I put breast milk on them they disappear overnight.  Jules wanted to try breast milk on one of her spots and sure enough it disappeared overnight.

This afternoon Emily had her 2 month vaccination appointment.  Two shots in one leg and one shot in the other.  I was a wreck beforehand because it kills me when we have to put saline drops in her nose and she screams murder so I knew this was going to be rough.  She did scream for about five minutes straight but I was finally able to calm her down and get her sleeping.  She was awake shortly after we got home though and was crying a lot over the course of the afternoon so I broke out the children's Tylenol and gave her a dose.  She went to sleep shortly there after and has been dozing on and off ever since.

  

Hopefully tonight isn't going to be too rough though I can't really imagine our nights getting much worse than they are.  As it is Emily only sleeps 1-2.5 hours at a time at night.  Her average is 1.5 hours at a time.  She doesn't like sleeping on her back unless she's laying between us in bed.  When she's in bed with us, I can't sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time because I'm worried one of us will roll into her or accidentally pull a blanket over her head or move a pillow over her face.  I can manage a more sound sleep if she's actually cradled in the crook of my arm but that position is only semi comfortable for so long before I have to move her.  She'll sleep over an hour at a time in her vibrating chair which I place at the side of the bed so I can quickly reach her when she starts crying.  I'm hoping we'll be able to get her sleeping in her crib by 4 months old.  In the meantime we're seriously considering getting a king sized bed.

Last but not least, her are her measurements from today:

Weight - 11 lbs, 6.25 oz (65th percentile)

Height - 22.5 in (60th percentile)

Head - 38.7 cm (50th percentile)

Tonight Jules is graciously sleeping downstairs with Emily so I can get four or five hours of uninterrupted sleep as a thank you for the three nights of full time duty I had (she had important work stuff this week that required her to be well rested). I can tell that a) I'm definitely a mother now, and b) I don't remember how to just go to bed on my own anymore. I went upstairs and then realized we were almost out of baby wipes downstairs so I grabbed a new pack and brought it down. Back upstairs I went. Then I thought perhaps one or both of them might get cold in the night so I brought down a couple of blankets. Back upstairs I went. Then I decided to bring down a warmer sleeper for Emily. Back upstairs I went. Then I decided I should probably bring up the breast pump. Then my phone so I could read the news while I drifted off. Then a bottle of water.

Now I'm typing this out...

Sigh...

Why am I wasting this opportunity to sleep? I should be dreaming right now. Or not dreaming because I'm so tired.

Maybe I'm dreaming this blog post right now... A real one would probably have updates on Emily instead of rambling...