The Salvateenies: Who Needs Sleep?

Here's the good news: Caroline seems to be at a point where she can go longer stretches without eating, thereby allowing her to sleep for longer periods. The bad news? Her brothers don't seem to be there yet. Oh, and it's not always consistent. Oh, yeah, and it's certainly not predictable.

Two nights this past week, I've had the babies napping in the living room, waiting for their evening feeding before putting them to bed in their cribs. They made it through the "witching hour" in the evening - when they scream their heads off and flail around in or out of their swaddles - and finally napped and I had fastforwarded in my head the two and a half to three hours until they would eat again and decided I could get a few things done (watch a tv show, pump, write an email or two, etc.) while they slept, feed them when they woke, and get to bed by 11, exhausted and ready to sleep as soon as I'd gotten them down. But the Salvateenies have minds of their own and THIS is the time they chose to sleep for FOUR AND A HALF HOURS STRAIGHT. Had I known, obviously, the chores could've waited until the middle of the night or the next day and I would've slept then. But as they slept longer, I kept thinking, "I'll go to bed now and then just get up...no, they'll get up as soon as I lie down." But they DIDN'T!

And then, last night, they decided to be on different schedules, the boys waking about an hour after Caroline at each turn...meaning we'd just barely gotten her finished and back to bed and started to rest ourselves when they got up. Grrr...

All the books tell us that we can't really expect them to even start falling into a predictable pattern until they're about 6 weeks old - which they'll be this Wednesday. But then they add the caveat "from the expected full-term due date", which means we really have another four weeks to go. We're trying to lay the groundwork of napping and sleep times now, but some feedings they'll scarf down 3 ounces of formula and then sleep for three hours and others they'll fall asleep when they've only eaten an ounce and wake up ravenous forty-five minutes later. How can you plan?

It really is a good thing they're so cute!

And speaking of cute...