16 Weeks

Coffee break post time...

Andrew is 16 weeks old today -- my, how the time flies! Yesterday I worked a split shift due to an evening meeting, so in the afternoon I took him to have Easter photos taken at the mall. Live bunny + smiling baby = ridiculously cute.

After a couple of weeks during which he would sleep for 5-7 hour stretches, Andrew is back to waking every 3 hours or so. I've been doing some reading, and apparently this is very common -- and healthy -- for exclusively-breastfed infants. The period from 4-12 months of age is one of huge development and growth, and babies do much of their growing while sleeping. And growing uses lots of calories, so that explains why he's eating all the darn time! One other thing I hadn't realized is that babies' brains are only 25% of their adult size at birth, so he's now expending a ton of energy working on the remaining 75%.

Oh, and babies don't just wake in the night because they're hungry. They also have shorter sleep cycles, and longer periods of "light" sleep. Plus, sometimes they just need Mommy or Daddy for closeness and security during the night. Can't deny them that!

So, since there's really nothing that can (or should) be done to "make" him sleep longer, I'm focusing on coping strategies: I'll renew my pledge to be in bed by 9:00 p.m., so that even if Andrew wakes several times in the night, my total sleep time by 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning can approach 7-8 hours (rested mommy = good mommy). Hell, some of these nights I may even aim for an 8:00 bedtime, since he's usually down by around 7:30 anyway. And I'll remind myself that he'll only be this little for a small fraction of his life, and that I'll miss this nighttime bonding time when he's 17 and out driving around with who-knows-whom at god-only-knows-what-hour...ugh, I can't think about that.

Milestone: First real laugh on Friday 3/14/08! I mean, like 5 minutes of giggling. He is the best thing in the whole world.