Foolish me! I thought we had turned the corner on the sleeping in the co-sleeper thing when the night after my last post, the babies slept from 8:00 to 3:30 then 3:30 to 6:00. It was awesome. I figured that while it might not go that great every night from there on out, the worse was over.
HA HA HA! Joke's on me!
Last night was rough. Both babies up at 11:30, back to sleep by midnight, up again at 3:30 to eat. Not so bad, right? Well, Maddie never really went back to sleep. She was up and down, up and down, up and down until finally she was just up at 5:30. Yuck, yuck. (Riley slept 'til 6:45 after the 3:30 feeding.) I was ready to send Maddie back where she came from and I'm not even the one who spent most of the night trying to get her back to sleep (Thanks, GH.) My other thought was to just put her in her own room and go ahead and give the ol' "cry it out" method a try. I am theoretically philosphically opposed to CIO, but I'm starting to come around.* Feh.
We'll see how they do tonight. They spent all day today at daycare, a trial run for my return to work next week. As predicted, Maddie was a trooper. She napped well (so they say), and ate three four-ounce bottles at the scheduled times. Riley, well, there's another story. He refused his first bottle outright. At the next feeding, he choked down the four ounces under duress. At the next feeding, he ate a whole ounce. Wowie! Surprisingly, he was not too starved when we got home. I gave him a solo feeding when we got home since Maddie had just eaten and daycare. He ate a normal amount of time, then took a short nap. I'm worried that he'll be up all night wanting to eat, but he and Maddie both seemed pretty exhausted all evening, and tired. I think it was quite a long day for them.
As for my day, once GH (who played hookey from work) and I dropped the twins off I burst into inconsolable tears and spent all day calling to check on them. Wait, no that's not exactly what happened. In truth, I turned up the music, rolled down my windows, and drove away in a cloud of glee. I feel like a bad mother for admitting that, but boy, did I need a break. GH and I went out for breakfast, did some errands, watched three episodes of House MD, lounged around, ate, and generally relaxed. It was great. It gave me hope that while I'm not excited about going back to my job, it will be something different than running ragged with twins, and I could use a change of scene.
I was happy to pick the babies up, although I was hoping they would give me smiles when they saw me and instead they just bobbled their heads around and looked confused. At least they weren't screaming their heads off or anything like that. I guess, selfish me, I just wanted some recognition from them that I'm the one (along with GH, of course) who has been taking care of them for fourteen weeks and that they like me better than daycare providers, dammit. I didn't necessarily get that sense. But I did get a day off, and that was good.
*As an aside, I don't want to start a CIO debate. (Do I have enough readers for a debate?) (Have I used enough parenthetical references in this post?) I don't think CIO is child abuse, like some people do. I also don't think that for me, for the twins, and for GH it's the right choice. But ask me again in a month when I'm even more sleep-deprived.
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3 comments:
Sounds like your night sucked, but the day was decent enough to make up for it. As for them not recognizing you- just wait until they are 18 months old and clinging on you and howling as you try to walk out the door. Its heartbreaking- until you peak back in a few minutes later and their laughing and thinking "who's mommy?"
Sounds like a rough night. I'm glad you got a break today. Sounds like fun. :)
I think even work can feel like a break, because the hardest thing about parenting is the sheer relentlessness of it. My friends who work outside the home say that they really benefit from that time away.
Good luck tonight!
Great post. You're so honest. I'll tell ya' when CIO worked for me-not when OD was an infant, but at about 11 months, she woke up at midnight one night. I asked her if she was hungry (like an idiot) and she nodded. So I fixed her a bottle. Then it was like that every night for a week. Luckily, we were headed for her 1-year checkup and I told the doctor about it, and he said, "she's not hungry. She's got you figured out." So much for that. We went immediately to CIO, and after one night the pattern was broken.
Probably more than you needed to know about us. Sorry.
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