Oh for the Sweet Love of Sleep!

Oh, sleep! How I took you for granted before baby!

Over the past 9 weeks, I have thought a lot about sleep. Notice the emphasis on thought. Actual sleeping, not so much.

In reality, I can't complain too much. We were blessed with a baby who has slept relatively well at night since birth. It is the daytime sleeping that has changed dramatically over the last two months.

The first month, Caitlin slept all. the. time. We would have to wake her to feed her, change her, love on her, and she would still fall asleep doing all of the above. She just couldn't get enough.

At week 5, she began to be more alert. She would eat, be awake for awhile, and then take a nice long nap. Easy, peasy.

Then week 7 hit. A culmination of things happened. I decided to transition her from her RNP (rock and play) to her crib. She went through a growth spurt. She decided daytime napping not for her anymore. The result? One crabby baby. Thus one crabby mommy. Thus one crabby daddy.

Something needed to be done. I poured through my baby books. I talked to friends. I searched online.

I found a wealth of information. This link in particular saved us. It was chock-full of counter-intuitive information. In fact, I am still wading through all the pages of information and attached links.

Who knew that more sleep during the day leads to more sleep at night?
Who knew that babies who are 2 months old should only be awake for about an hour to an hour and a quarter at a time before going back to sleep?

Seems like a lot of sleep. But guess what? We're trying it. It's working.

Baby smiles. Mommy smiles. Daddy smiles.

Here is a picture of Caitlin sleeping from the view of our awesome video camera. Isn't she sweet?

Here is a picture of Caitlin awake in her RNP in the middle of the night when she is supposed to be sleeping. When this happens, I call her my demon baby (not very nice I know!) because her eyes glow and because I know all hell is about to break loose.

Word of Wisdom: Don't mess with baby's sleep schedule too much. We did this Saturday (sorry, Heather and Mark!) and Sunday was not pretty (our Bible study group can attest to this!).

All right. That's it for now. I need to, I don't know, go take a nap or something!