So aside from bedtime being almost 3am, Camper did REALLY well last night! He slept a lot during the day yetersday, whcih probably accounts for the late bedtime, but he usually gets to a point that he just needs his bed. Last night we cuddled and loved him until midnight, at which time he had some food. He played around for a couple hours, ate again, and then I read to him and he FINALLY laid down and stayed asleep. He woke up right before 6 and I fed him before he was even fully awake. Tip: If you can feed your baby before he’s FREAKING OUT there’s a bigger chance he’ll go back to sleep. And go back to sleep he did, until about 9, when he slept with Daddy for a bit, until almost 11!! Wowza, good baby. Now, in John’s words, he’s “happy as a clam.”
So yesterday I was talking to a friend about the division of labor between a Mommy and Daddy when it comes to baby, feeding, etc. There are tons of different ways you can work things, so this is just how we decided to do it.
When I was breastfeeding it was a lot more difficult than it is now- mostly because I was necessary for most interchanges with baby, especially at night. To combat my complete fatigue we ended up just making sure I slept other times…John would sleep a big chunk at night, but as soon as he got home from school he would take baby so that I could nap as much as possible. I napped in shifts, 2 hours here, 3 hours there. Then there was the “emergency plan.” If I wasn’t able to get enough sleep or if Camper decided to be CRAZY one night, sometimes John would actually take him out of the house and drive him around for a couple hours in the middle of the night so that I could sleep without thinking he needed to nurse. It was not a perfect plan, it was difficult and I didn’t get very much sleep. An important part of that plan was me sleeping in the baby’s room when I was “on,” and then napping in the bedroom when I was “off.” John and I slept alone…but that at least ensured that we both got sleep. But that sucks…bad. But then along came mastitis and a whole new plan.
When we weaned I was very sick, I gave him a bottle to see how he’d do. He was a champ, so I promptly took two percocet or whatever the doc had given me for the postpartum pain and got a little loopy. John sent me to bed and fed Camper himself. Out of this experience was born our “method.” I still try to nap in the evenings, but now I can just sleep as long as I can sleep. You would think that would be a lot, but most nights it’s an hour or two or not at all. The best night so far I went to bed about 11:30 and John put him to bed around 1. Camper slept until 4:30, and I got up and fed him then, and he went back to sleep. John slept from 1 until he had to get up for school and I got about 7 hours of sleep, total, albeit with a feeding break in there. It worked! And John and I actually both slept in our bed. But Camper has not cooperated so fully since. Now We both stay up for awhile, I end up taking the late night feeding, sleep until he wakes up for his early morning feeding, and then pass him off for John to do the regular morning feeding while I sleep more. Sometimes John and I end up in the same bed, sometimes we end up sleeping in Camper’s room to be closer to him or just get some desperate sleep. We switch things up here and there, but you get the picture…shift work. That way we each get uninterrupted sleep. This would not work with breastfeeding…so that’s definitely trickier to figure out…but I think it’s working for us pretty well at the moment. We’re both still tired, especially when he has nights that he just doesn’t calm down…but it’s working.
There are a few courtesies you can observe when it comes to shift work. It’s really nice if at the end of your “shift” if you can make sure baby is clean, changed, and fed, and maybe even sleeping before you do the big hand off. But then again, if he’s been a screamy little monster baby and you’ve hit the “I love you but I don’t like you very much right now” stage, where comforting feels more like trying to comfort a swizzle stick because he’s screaming so hard he’s made his whole body hard and won’t relax…sometimes you just switch shifts. Switch fast.
So yeah, that’s what we do. And pray for the night when it gets a little more predictable so we can get a routine going on. Oh that’ll be nice. Soooo nice.
