ChezPerky

Sam has now slept through the night seven days in a row.  Abby, while still waking up in the middle of the night, usually does have a six-to-eight hour stretch somewhere in the night (problem is, she goes to bed at 6:30, so that doesn’t help US much!).  Yes, I get that, medically speaking, six hours is sleeping through the night, but practically speaking if she goes to bed at 6:30, wakes up at 12:30am and then proceeds to wake up every three hours, that may be sleeping through the night, but it really doesn’t help us much, does it?  What is more common is that she wakes up around 11pm and 4am, which I can live with. 

I prefer it, though, when she sleeps through her 11pm feed which she used to do regularly, and I’m not sure why she reverted.
That being said, I will not ignore my baby’s hungry cries.  Particularly Abby’s.  She has been on a ridiculous hunger strike ever since we introduced solids.  The only thing she’ll eat is yogurt, but she turns her nose up at all other food, and doesn’t even enjoy bottles of mommy’s milk anymore.  She fights mealtime like it’s pure torture, and I don’t get it.  Poor kiddo.  When I took her to the doctor to get checked, she was, fortunately, still on a perfect growth curve, despite only taking in about 400 calories per day (compared to her brother and sister who take in closer to 800-900 per day!).

Before you all get on me about various methods of sleep training, the pediatrician agreed with me that she’s not taking in enough during the day to ignore her at night.  She simply needs more calories and if she’s waking up at night to eat, we must feed her.  Furthermore, she’s not a baby who can be force-fed during the day to make up for what she’s not taking in.  She screams bloody murder if you try to force food into her (whether it’s bottles or solids).    No sense in forcing my baby to cry. 

Still, we can see that light shining brighter at the end of the tunnel.  But careful what you wish for, because my bed is empty and I feel the emptiness so clearly now.  Just as my arms used to be heavy with the emptiness of infertility and the babies I wished would fill them… now my arms are empty in the middle of night as I reach for my Sammy, who used to snuggle with me all night as he went on his all-night-all-you-can-eat mama-buffet binges.  Are those a thing of the past?  Will I never again get to snuggle with my snuggle monster?  Is my bonding time done?  *Gasp*  Where has the time gone?  Did I forget to savor every single moment?  What will I do without him??