Micah had his 2 week appointment today, and he weighed in at 6 lbs (well, with rounding up)! He is growing well (averaging an ounce a day) and we were officially given permission to stop force-feeding him at 3 hr intervals around the clock - we can now feed "on demand" so tonight is the first night we intend to let him sleep until he wakes up. I'm SOOO excited - I think we might actually get 4 hours of sleep in a row. I've continued to feed him every 3 hrs or so all day in the hopes that he won't be too hungry tonight to sleep a bit longer.
The past few nights, he has been unhappy from about 4 am until 8 am. We've been waking him up from a pretty sound sleep, and then we have a hard time getting him back to sleep after the feeding. He'll start crying, and I almost always have to nurse him again . . . we've been cluster feeding for several hours every night, and it is taking its toll on us. It is probably more accurate to say he won't let us put him down after the feeding - he'll sleep on me or DH, but if we try moving him to the bassinet so we can sleep, he starts crying, and since we are too exhausted to stay awake and hold him on us in the bed . . . well, let's just say it has been challenging. We've eventually been able to get him to sleep in the bouncy seat, but we don't want to have him sleeping in the bouncy seat every night. Here is hoping we have better luck tonight!
We are going to attempt to use the playmat tonight - we'll see if he is ready for that. Luckily, he seems to really like tummy time, although he mostly spends tummy time on Mommy or Daddy's chest. We thought we'd try a change of location tonight, so we're off to the rec room in the basement for a change of scenery.
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2 comments:
Good Luck tonight!!! It's a little scary to hear you say "hopefully we'll get 4 hours sleep tonight" :) haha
All I can say is if you are breastfeeding, you don't get 4 hrs of sleep in a row at all the first few weeks - you have to feed them every 3 hrs from the start of the last feeding (and our feedings were lasting over 1 hr) until they hit their birth weight again, so at best I'd get 1 1/2 - 2 hrs. I really didn't sleep at all the first week - too wound up to sleep even once the baby fell asleep - I kept watching him breathing and sleeping.
Some people are really good about napping all day long after every feed - I'm not - I just try to catch some sleep after the 2 overnight feedings. If you bottle feed you can get more sleep because you can trade off feeding sessions.
Try not to worry - it is exhausting, but SOOO worth it! I can already tell it is getting easier, and DH & I have a "system" to maximize the sleep time. Now if we can just get Micah sleeping for longer periods at night, we'll be in heaven!
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