Saturday, February 04, 2006

I'm just so damned clever...

Alastair has not had many restful nights. I think he's had two, and they both came in the middle of this past week. We were hopeful that those two nights signaled a change in his body-clock, and that he might be acclimating himself to sleeping at night.

And then came Thursday night.

It seems that the only thing that can send young A to slumberland is a ride on Daddy's chest. Sometimes he will drift off if he's on his back (and we're happier for it, as it slightly reduces the SIDS chances), but on Thursday he absolutely had to be on his tummy. Multiple attempts to take him off my chest, or even to roll him over, were met with unrelenting wails. (The chest sleeping does not fit with Daddy's back-health, which has taken a beating over the last week. When he's been there for more than an hour, I get a deep and brutal pain that radiates down from my mid-back, and generally lasts about 20 hours.) And so it was that Alastair slept -- face down -- on my chest from midnight until 4am, and then from 7:30am to 9:30am. 6 hours. Friday was hell.

So I got to thinking about how crafty I was last week with my late-night mocha. I figured I'd stay up again with my wailing boy until his usual 4am drop-off, then crawl into bed beaming a big heroic grin. Alastair had other ideas. In fact, he slept from midnight until 3:15am, and over half of that time was spent in his despised bassinet. Figuring I was in the clear (and getting a bit drowsy), I crawled into bed. 5 minutes later, the wailing started.

OK, fine, maybe he's hungry...? Amanda roused herself, fed him, I changed him, and we put him back to bed, whereupon he began snorting and hacking and having all sorts of trouble breathing.

Long story short, he didn't let me sleep until about 6:30 this morning. Fun. And I go back to work on Monday.

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