Sleep talking

I know I cannot sustain too many readers here with Liam’s daily sleep diary. It may not be the most interesting fodder for the rest of the world, but since his sleep dictates my sleep, it is endlessly fascinating to me. And I have a proud little boast to make. On Saturday night Liam slept for a record seven straight hours. I was only up once to feed him, around 3 a.m., and was shocked when I checked my watch that it was not only 1 a.m. Then on Sunday, when we were out at the birthday party and his schedule was thrown off a little, he slept a shorter spurt – 5 hours – but followed that up with another almost-five-hours stretch so that again, I was only up once. This was previously unheard of and the fact that it happened two nights in a row really gave me hope for the days to come. Chad will admit that he then dropped the ball – on Monday night I was at the gym and he let Liam fall asleep in his clothes and without a bath, so that I had to wake him/change him/feed him when I came home, and he was up every 3 hours again all night. By morning I had let Chad have it and I don’t think we’ll see a repeat of that again! And last night – get this – Liam slept a solid eight hours, from 7 til 3 a.m. I woke up when he started to cry and noticed right away that my boobs were huge (meaning, for the uninitiated, that they hadn’t been used in an extra long while). Normally not a great feeling to have, but in this case it was heavenly! He then slept through again til 6:15 a.m. Now if only I could find it in myself to also go to bed at 7 p.m., I could have my first solid night’s sleep in months…

A funny thing about babies too – it’s like they’ve got some sort of sixth sense. I often feel like Liam knows all my secrets and I can’t get away with anything with him. Once when we were having a particularly trying day early on, I set him down for a few minutes and grabbed a magazine – I just needed a break from him. I had only been reading for a few minutes when I looked up and saw the look on his face. He wasn’t crying, but he just gave me this look that said, You shouldn’t be doing that… you should be with me. And I put the magazine down and haven’t done it again. He totally keeps me accountable and honest. If I ever drop him on his head, I’m sure he will find a way to let the world know it. And sometimes I have nightmares that doing the tiniest little thing wrong these days will scar him for life because he’ll never forget… Anyway, there is a positive flip side to this. When he woke up after the eight-hour stretch last night he was a grinning fool. He was lying there on the change table with this look on his face that said Hey mom, aren’t you proud of me?? He could not stop smiling. Way too cute.

I’ve added a link to another blog I recently discovered – www.dooce.com. This is another motherhood-themed blog, but it’s written by a woman who openly admits, with great hostility, that she hates being a mom. Yowzers. It makes me feel like I’m a saint. It’s wickedly funny but man, her poor kid. Not only that – she was also fired from her job for writing about her employer in the blog (and given the general tone of her writing, I’m sure it’s obvious that what she wrote about them was none too kind, hence the firing.) Go check it out if you’re up for a good read.