Wednesday, November 16, 2011

How Does He Sleep?

I have discovered that new parents get some pretty standard questions: Are you breastfeeding? (yes, now I am), Is he a good baby? (Yup, I have no other baby to compare him to, but he is great to me), Does he sleep well? (ummm...).
My little guy is a great eater, he loves to play, read books, and laugh (especially at his mommy). He doesn't like to sleep, especially alone. From day one he was a cuddle bug, he loved to be held and rocked. My lactation consultant told me to hold him skin to skin as much as possible in those first weeks in order to help him nurse. I held and held and held, it worked... and created a baby who loves to sleep next to a parent. Of course many people ask how he sleeps, and the answer is that he sleeps pretty good, as long as he is in our bed! He naps in there alone (after being nursed to sleep) ; we often put him to bed in his crib at night but he wakes up anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours after we put him down... and then comes to bed with us. Sometimes we just skip the crib step and we all just go to bed together. Truth be told I love waking up to my happy, playing little boy. I also love that I get enough sleep, and my baby gets enough food, and parent cuddles. He doesn't usually fall asleep until some time between 10:30pm and midnight, which I find difficult because I am not a night owl, but he sleeps until some time between 8am and 9am and has at least 2 one-two hour naps during the day (often with a 30-45min nap in the early evening which we are trying to get rid of). He explores his world, giggles, laughs, listens to stories, plays games, eats like a horse, and jumps likes crazy during his awake hours. We bat around the idea of changing things... and always come to the same conclusion: he (and we) are not ready to let him cry it out. We know that lots of people do it, and it works, and the baby is just fine afterwards; and I am sure Griffin would be fine too. The truth is I can't stomach the idea of having to listen to him cry and doing nothing to help him, plus I don't enjoy the idea of getting up to nurse him once or twice a night, now it is so easy! So for now our little boy is a co-sleeping, happy baby; and we are co-sleeping happy parents. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! We know that eventually he will have to move to his own bed, but for now we will enjoy this time we have with him... they grow up so fast!

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