sleep, coda

It’s not over until the skinny baby sleeps.

I thought I could get away with a nice sum-up and move on. But then, something happened that was different and I just had to write about sleep one more time, ONE MORE TIME, because every time I hear someone report something semi-sane about how their baby sleeps, I assume it’s like that for them every night from now on, and if that were true for us, fine. I mean, I left a lot of room in my last report for a range of truths. 5 to 30 minutes of crying before falling asleep? Come on. He could have stuck with that.

But it wouldn’t be fair to that one person out there, like me, who needs to know that it can still get worse even after it gets better.

I wish I’d taken notes, because exhaustion is making my memory go funny. I think it’s fair to say that yesterday, he didn’t nap at all.

I’d like to say it this way: Jonah is staging a nap strike. Any babies out there want to join his union? Dues are paid in peach slices, skins removed.

I believe yesterday there may have been one mini-nap, in the morning, when I held him on my lap while I meditated. Other than that, there were at least two 45-minute I-will-bitch-but-I-will-not-sleep sessions in the crib.

Last night, he woke up at 10, 1, 3:30, 5:30, and 6. (We fed him at 1 and 6.)

Today, after another 45 minute sob-story sing-along non-nap in his crib this morning, we stuck him in the car and went off to the antiques and collectibles fair, because, really, why stay home and continue to torture him in the crib?

He’d won.

He fell asleep for a few minutes in the car, stayed asleep in the transfer to the stroller, and woke up as soon as we got inside the gates. Stayed awake through strollering, ergo-ing. Through drowsy and manic states. Passed out in the car again on the way home. Now is sleeping in the bucket on the floor of his nursery. Sleeping the sleep of the dead.

There, I think that does it. Unless his sleep varies dramatically from the range of possibilities contained in the previous post through everything in-between and up to no naps and 5 night-time awakenings, maybe I can stop writing about The Magnificent Act for a while.

Good night.