According to Google Images, this is what a Sleeping Child should look like:
Isn’t it lovely? Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t almost like there should be fairy dust and twinkly stars around their beautiful little head??
Currently our wittow angel is snoring, (I can hear her through the baby monitor) but the whole point of this post is that She Has Not Been Sleeping Enough in the last week. Seriously, this is how our evenings are supposed to go:
- Daddy gets home and takes the babby, and they play lovingly while Mummy makes dinner.
- Fambly has dinner, and Daddy clears away while Mummy and Babby have a bath, get into our jim-jams and nurse ourselves to sleep. (OK, maybe that was an inappropriate use of the collective – that just sounded weird.)
- Mummy and Daddy actually find their real names and spend the evening talking to one another like adults (read: watch lots of telly) until it’s time for bed.
Except since Sunday, there have been a few addenda:
- Babby wakes up after about an hour, and nurses back to sleep again.
- Babby wakes up again and wants to PLAY!
- Babby may or may not go back to sleep.
- Cat yowels loudly outside sleeping babby’s door for no discernible reason and WAKES HER UP!!
- Babby doesn’t want to go back to sleep again until at least 11.00. Last night IT WAS 12.30 PEOPLE (THAT”S AM!!) and Mummy gave up and called in Daddy for reinforcements. Then slept fitfully for an hour about being chased by a grizzly bear. (No, I am not kidding…)
Mummy is now shattered and is not quite sure of her name, address, or serial number. Or rank. Or whatever it is that you’re supposed to give to the enemy. Except, frankly, if the enemy would let me sleep, I’d probably sell out several governments and international corporations for a small kip at the moment…
* That’s Macbeth, BTW. Act 2, when M has just committed regicide and he and Lady M are planning more nefarious perfidies (like, really bad murders and stuff). (If you want me to use less high-falutin’ lingo, LET ME GET SOME SLEEP!!!)
UPDATE: OMG, she went to bed on time! And slept! And woke up for normal feeds, and then went back to sleep again!! And she had a nap again today!!! I may faint…
et Uxor 
Hope you get some time to nap while she’s asleep today. Probably no good trying to get her into a regular sleep pattern before you go to Canada. But, when you’re not so tired, and after the trip, may be worth trying cutting down any naps she has in the day to get her to sleep longer at night.
Hang on in there! ( as Shakespeare didn’t say!)
Problem is, when she only has one nap, she won’t go to sleep at night! And life has conspired against our morning naps the last few days – yesterday it was a delivery man, and today the conservatory guy… I think it was actually the birthday party on Saturday and the subsequent weird naptimes on Sunday that threw us out of whack – we were having pretty regular naps until then…
That’s a pity. It’s no comfort I know, but I didn’t have any problems with her father – he slept a lot of the time. His little bro’, now, was a different matter. I remember missing most of any serial I was trying to watch as we tried to settle him down. Maybe just go with the flow for now, keep weird hours and sleep when you (both) can until after the Canada trip, and try to get back into the ‘two naps a day’ routine until something else(!) turns up to change the situation again. Does she sleep in her own room during the day or in the cot by your bed?
In our bed – we’ve only got a travel cot in her room, and that’s not ideal at the moment. I think the reason it’s getting to me so much at the mo is that she usually is a good sleeper, and this week is so out of whack…