Thursday, June 17, 2010

So, so tired

Babies are fine. Nicky is fine. Tom and I are fine I suppose, but man, we are so tired.

We've been trying to trade off with him taking days and me taking nights, but while I've been able to stay awake all night fine (trying to do classwork and stuff between feedings) I sometimes don't get to actually sleep much during the day. Sometimes because we have to go somewhere (like the pediatrician, the WIC office and the lactation consultant-more on that in a minute) and sometimes because I still need to be "on" when Tom is taking Nicky to and from school or out to the store. If the babies happen to stay asleep while he's gone, then I can too, but they seem to like to wake up when he's out picking Nicky up and at the store specifically.

And I'm sure it's not easy on Tom either. With me sleeping during the day, that means especially on weekends he's dealing with all three kids at once where I usually only have the twins at night. He does get to sleep from about midnight to 9am usually, but sometimes he'll hear the crying if they are both up at once and hungry, and then he'll come help me.

Don't get me wrong though. I swear we have the least-cryingest babies ever. Very similar to Nicky. Oh they'll fuss, but they're very easy to console. Just pick them up and snuggle them. Give them a binky, a bottle, a change or a cuddle and they'll settle right down. We feel extremely fortunate about this! I think you'd have to drive us all to the funny farm if one or both were colicky.

But we are trying to not get into the habit of having them sleep ON us too much. They usually do a bit though as they fall asleep so much while we're feeding them, but we do try to swaddle them and put them in their crib or pack-n-play for sleep time between feedings. I know at night they'd sleep longer stretches if I just held them, but trying to break them both of that habit later doesn't sound like much fun, and holding one was easier and I think safer than trying to sleep holding two. Maybe if we had a king size bed we could just cosleep, but we definitely can't in our queen bed and they're kind of hard to sleep near. We have an Armsreach co-sleeper in our room at the foot of the bed, but they're NOISY sleepers! We sit there waking up at each grunt, mumble and squeak they make, anticipating them waking and fussing every moment. Not really conducive to a sound sleep.

Oh, and I keep forgetting. I actually am taking two last grad classes this summer to finish up my degree. They're online classes, so I thought I could manage it as long as I get maternity leave from work especially. Well, they meet Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, and I've been having a hard time remembering and attending them! I thought we'd gotten enough into a routine that surely this week I could make it to both classes. Well, I DID make it to Wednesday's, even though that meant I had only 2 hours of sleep during the day. (Tom let me sleep after though from about 9-1am thank goodness!) See, I stayed up to work on homework for that class and so didn't sleep before it. Lovely.

But Tuesday's class? Totally slept right through it. While sleep is awesome, it was so annoying to have missed it again! I just feel like an idiot emailing my instructor again to say I missed class. But I suppose I need to suck it up and just do it. The good thing is I can watch the taped version of the class, but it's not the same as attending. I watched the last 3 weeks that I'd missed, and actually found myself trying to participate at least once. That really doesn't work when you're watching a taped version after the fact though.

Gah, This makes three times during writing this post that Gabi has fussed. She's in her crib with Lily, but fussing and wants her binky. What she really wants is to be held though, so I better get on it. She might also be getting hungry as her last feeding started at 1:10am, but then she did fall asleep and only ate the last part of her bottle at like 3! One feeding just runs into the next at night it seems like.

Well, this time doesn't last forever right?

Oh, and note to self...talk about the lactation consultant luncheon I went to on Tuesday. Next post, Promise.

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