Who needs sleep?

I'm not quite sure how it is possible that I am surviving on such little sleep. Before giving birth I was more than a little worried about how my body would react to the demands of motherhood. Now that I've been doing it for 3 and a half weeks I'm proud to have joined the countless mothers across the world who are miraculously blessed to be able to function with erratic and minimal sleep. Don't get me wrong, I'm still tired - exhausted at times, but I'm alive and I haven't chewed Brett's head off in a fit of crankiness yet (although I'm sure that day may come).

According to "the literature" ( meaning the Internet and nurses at the hospital) breastfed newborns are supposed to eat 8 to 12 times every 24 hours. If you do the math that is every 2 to 3 hours. The "literature" also says time is kept from the beginning of one nursing session to the beginning of the next. It usually takes Brooke about 20-30 minutes to eat.

Now lets add in the fact that a newborn's digestive system is often not fully developed. This causes gas and reflux (aka spitting up). So lets add another half an hour of burping time and "upright" time.  The doctor recommended keeping Brooke upright for 20-30 minutes after eating to keep her food down because we were having issues with her waking up from the reflux.

When all is said and done that leaves 1-2 hour stretches for sleep (assuming she falls right to sleep after feeding. Sometimes we'll get lucky at night and she'll give us an extra hour. But also sometimes she'll be wide awake or wake up more often. In the end, the point is that long stretches of sleep are so last year.

Now just for fun lets add in another element to the mix. Again, referring to the literature, babies go through "growth spurts" where they need to eat more often. For the last day or two Brooke has wanted to eat twice as often as for twice as long. Yes, that is a lot, thanks for your sympathy. Yesterday, for example she would eat for 45 minutes then sleep for half an hour and then want to eat again. Luckily she still slept for 2 straight hours one time during the night.  Yes, it was a rough night.

You are probably wondering what I'm doing blogging then, instead of sleeping. Well, our poor little girl is having problems staying asleep recently. I'm not sure if its gas pains or silent reflux or a mixture of the two but ever so often while she is sleeping she'll scrunch up her face, make a few fussy noises, tense up her body, arch her back and do a few other things. This will often wake her up if she is sleeping on her own. However if I'm holding her she'll stay calm and sleep through the pain. And so right now I am holding her. Yes, probably not the best solution but after not sleeping much yesterday she was way overtired this morning and so it's more important to me that she catches up on her sleep.

And so here we are, sitting on the back patio (because I couldn't stand being inside anymore) enjoying the "fall" weather (sunny and 85) and watching the cars go by. Holding Brooke in one arm and typing on the iPad with my free hand. Hoping I can keep her asleep for another hour.

Hopefully we can get back to our "normal" schedule soon so I can go back to sleeping while she sleeps. But until then my motto is "who needs sleep anyway?"  Also I just read a quote on Facebook

‎"If you do not attach meaning to suffering, it is despair." Victor Frankl

I'm glad my sleepless nights have meaning. :) 

..... I tried to add a couple pictures I took while sitting out here but couldn't get it to work. Even after it made me sign up for google+ .... Lame.