November 27th.

After a month of trying to figure out this whole sleep thing, I’ve kind of folded my hand and have had to give in to what it is and what I’m not. I’m not going to let him “cry it out” as so many books and people, recommended. I don’t care what you think of me, when my baby cries, I’m going to respond. That is what feels the most natural thing for me to do. He’s only a baby and he only knows how to communicate one way. What does he learn if I don’t listen to him? So after much mental debate and confusion, I’m sticking with what I’m doing, because what I’m doing is the best I can do.

So yeah, he doesn’t sleep through the night. He has once or twice, but on average he doesn’t. When he does wake up I will hold him until he falls asleep and put him back in the crib. Sometimes that doesn’t work, and then I will plop him down in our bed, and it becomes a family bed for the rest of the night. My body has to learn how to sleep a different way, and that’s O.K. because I really like the family bed. There is something so satisfying seeing my baby boy and husband asleep, and it is so much easier to meet his needs when he’s right next to me. I’m getting addicted to it, I know because when he sleeps longer in his own bed I’m awake waiting for him to wake up because I miss him. Think what you will, for the first time I actually feel like I’m doing something natural and right.

I have to back up a little bit and share what he used to do before I decided to bring him into the bed. When he would wake up and I would hold him, with his eyes closed and his little hand he would reach up and brush my face and hair with his hand. It was as though he was blind and was searching for my face. How can that not touch your heart? It was then that I had this feeling that he needed to be closer to me, why else would he be searching for me?

Babies grow so fast that this thing he did with his hand only advanced to slapping my face and grabbing my hair. Even still, I find it endearing. Now he stretches across the bed one hand touching me and one hand or foot touching Andy. We are all adjusting trying to find our own bed space, but I love it. I love seeing my baby sleep soundly.

December 2nd

Did I say I enjoyed sleeping all together? I’m not too sure. Things keep changing and it’s hard to keep adjusting. I think I’m creating a bed monster, but I’m not sure. He keeps waking up earlier and won’t take a pacifier, only me. I don’t know why he keeps waking up, I swear I’m doing everything right, but he does and continues to do so. Part of me is not longer enamored by his cuteness when he sleeps next to me, but annoyed that I have to keep reaching my boob out to him to get him back to sleep. He’s been doing this thing to where he reaches for me but moves his head down so I keep moving down to adjust to him moving down. I swear a couple of weeks and we can take this show on the road. But by then he will have learned a new thing that keeps me awake and guessing.

Despite his diabolical need to take over the bed, I find that I am sleeping better with him next to me then if he were in the other room. And I’m constantly amazed when I wake from a deep slumber to find him next to me alive and un-smothered.

I love the little independence that he is learning to do. He can sit up by him self, most of the time- I still try to surround him with pillows because he will teeter totter and fall. I love how he smiles and giggles every time he sees Lucy our cat, and she in return has been daring to get closer and closer to him. His death grip has occasionally taken ahold of her fur, but she’s a trooper, I think cats get the whole baby thing and how they can’t help being babies.

Some days he hums when I feed him. He will do it all day, as though he’s testing the microphone on stage. Testing testing, one two… We can take him to restaurants now and he sits in those high chairs with a purse or a sweater stuffed behind his back. I’m a little worried about how dirty things are and how often he will put his mouth on the side of the table and suck it like a Slurpee from Circle K. I’m thinking about buying those cleaning wipes and just having it in my diaper bag. But then I think about him sucking on those chemicals, so who wins? There’s no way of getting around a diaper bag. It’s a must. The day you leave the house without it, well you know what happens, shit happens.

I laugh when I think how much baby crap we bring when we go visit grandma for a weekend. Is this all really necessary? Apparently cause I can’t seem to not bring it. Let’s face it; modern technology and ideas have really made a lot of things easier. I mean that little foldable bath chair is genius! My mind still backs up and tries to be a pioneer about everything, keeping it simple and rugged, but who am I kidding? Really? I need to embrace this modern age yet I keep wondering if I would have ever made it as a mother back when none of this baby crap ever existed? I have this lingering doubt that I wouldn’t have made the cut especially considering what kind of labor I had, or lack of.