The secret life of babies

I want you to think back a little bit. When was the last time that you went to sleep parallel to your bed and woke up perpendicular to it? It sounds like an odd question, doesn't it. I'll get back to it in a little while.

I went to a La Leche League meeting when my daughter was about 2 months old and one of the leaders, when asked whether one baby's frequent nursing at night was a symptom of co-sleeping, answered that it's perfectly normal for babies to wake up at night frequently to nurse and that as a mother you don't want your baby to sleep through the night anyway because you'll miss out on the bonding of nursing at night. That's total crap.

From the moment a new baby makes it into the life of a family, the mother, father and everyone who hears that baby crying at night - the neighbors, the neighborhood cat, the cops driving by on night patrol - want that baby to sleep from 8pm to 6 am at least. Continuously. Without crying or needing a diaper change or nursing.

I can appreciate the challenge here. Dr. Sears says that babies love to practice their newly acquired skills at night. They wake up and sit if they've just learned to sit up, or walk around the crib if they've just learned to walk. They roll, turn over, play with their pacifier, play with the crib bumper, kick off their blanket. Sometimes they bang their pacifier against the crib bars, reminiscent of the way prisoners bang their metal cups along their cell bars. This problem of playing at night is exacerbated by the short sleep cycles that babies have, and so if it seems that your infant is waking up every hour, it's because they probably are.

As I write this post, the clock reads 4:53am. My daughter is sound asleep after her now-all-too-regular 4 am feeding and I am wide awake. In fact, she fell asleep while nursing in my arms, warm and snugly. I'm debating the benefits of using the same remedy on myself - a warm glass of milk and a cuddle with something warm. I've nixed the idea of the milk and settled for water off my bedside table. The computer is really warm and I'm snuggled with it in bed. And now that I've put the post to electronic memory, I'm hoping that I won't be staying up much longer, placticing my newly acquired skill of blogging.