When Claire awoke around 5 a.m., Husband got up and took care of her. I woke at 5:30 though, and decided to start my day, so I took her on after the feeding. Rather than immediately try to get her to sleep again, I decided this was the start of her day and kept her up. She lasted 30 minutes, maybe 45, before she rubbed her eyes. So today I thought I’d try a different way. I held her and rocked her to sleep from 6:15 to 6:45 a.m.; when she was deeply asleep, I gently put her in the crib. She stirred very slightly but remained asleep. I tiptoed from the room and dozed on the sofa. She slept until 8:00 a.m.! She woke crying and hungry.

So we ate and played, and watched the garbage trucks come just outside her window. Around 9:20 she was sleepy, so I rocked and held her again. She does fight going to sleep; arches her back, wiggles, cries with disappointment, while at the same time her eyes are rolling back in her head and her eyelids can’t stay up because she’s so sleepy. She fell asleep within ten minutes, and again I held her for half an hour, then put her down. But Husband had to leave for work, and her room is over the garage, and the movement of the door woke her; she’d slept only 45 minutes.

Then we went to the library. We arrived too late for the baby lap-sit story time. I chatted with a couple mothers and we wandered the library children’s section. (In the past couple of days, the feedback I’ve gotten from mothers is that I’m “leader of the pack” — as one mom phrased it — in terms of getting out with Claire. A number of women said they didn’t make it to outings until their children were at least six months old.) I attempted to go for a walk in Central Park with her, but she started to get tired (again!). We got home at 11:45 a.m. and I fed her at noon. She fussed while she played, so I did the nap routine again. Except that this time, she woke up at half an hour. I put her in the crib, but she became very alert. I didn’t want to deal with crying today. So I picked her up again and returned to the chair. I held her and dozed with her; she slept for 90 minutes.

We went out to the grocery store, drugstore, and cafe, because I needed human contact and she needed stimulation. She was cheerful but became tired quickly. We got home at 3:30 and this time I decided to just put her in the swing. She’s sleeping now.

Supposedly, babies have wakeful periods of about two hours between naps, but it seems Claire has even shorter times. Then there’s the 2-3-4 rule: when babies are 6 months old or so, after first waking, they are usually awake 2 hours before the first nap, about 3 hours before the second nap, and about 4 hours before bedtime. Today is typical for Claire:

Up at 5:00 a.m.
Back to sleep at 6:15 (to finish night sleep)
Up at 8:00 a.m.
Back to sleep at 9:30 (1st nap)
Up at 10:30 a.m.
Back to sleep at 12:15 p.m. (2nd nap)
Up at 1:45 p.m.
Back to sleep at 3:30 p.m. (3rd nap)
Up at 5:00 p.m.
Back to sleep at 7:00 p.m. (bedtime)
Then up twice for feeding, around 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. (total wakefulness usually 1 hour)

That’s about 9.25 hours of awake time out of 24 hours. This means there’s 14.75 hours of sleep. At her age, the typical range is 12-15. It just seems as though as soon as she’s awake, she’s sleepy again.

It’s got me thinking. It seems that the challenge, for me, is accepting this little person’s needs over my preferences. In other words, my work is caring for her. This means slowing down. Maybe I won’t need to hold her for 30 minutes for each nap “forever” — she won’t need me that long. And what would I be doing otherwise? Reading blogs? Checking mail? Folding laundry? Why do I want so quickly to put her down so I can do these other things? (Rhetorical question.) My point here is that a lot of the tasks I feel tugging at me are not truly priorities. Even though the past four months has felt like a lifetime in many ways, she still is only four months old and not even 13 pounds. My strategy for dealing with naps will be first to get her accustomed to being put into the crib by me. That requires holding her, rocking her well into sleep, then putting her down repeatedly. Once going into the crib by Mommy is normal and routine, then perhaps I can reduce the amount of time I hold her bit by bit. At night, Husband has managed to set up a routine of rocking and holding her for 10-15 minutes, then putting her in the crib. Even if she’s awake, she’ll accept going into the crib and fall asleep. That’s my eventual goal.

Something else has got me pondering. Before I became a parent, I rarely though about excretory functions and sleep. (Well, sleep and insomnia have always been a problem for me, but I didn’t read about sleep.) Now I’ve consumed a catalogue of books and websites about how to get my child on a sleep schedule. Each book contains case histories and anecdotes about the various troubles parents have had, and I wonder: what is it about sleep that is so difficult? It’s a basic human need and function. (The same question arose for me about breast feeding.)

I mean, really, think about this. The body gets tired. It needs to sleep. You’d think it would be simple and easy to do. Yet thousands of parents can’t seem to get their children to sleep. Or rather, they can’t get their children to sleep on a schedule that allows the parents to sleep well. I asked my mother what she remembers of raising four children and getting them to sleep. Sometimes we cried a little, and she’d pat our backs and say sweet things like Nighty-night, time for sleep, I love you, and we’d fall asleep. We didn’t, apparently, cry hysterically for an hour or more. Maybe we were “easy” children, or maybe time erases the memories. Regardless, I don’t seem to have an easy child; this has been evident since birth. She’s alert and engaged. Every single time we go out in public — to the store, the library, the park — people say two things when we engage in conversation. One: She’s so small and cute! Two: She’s so alert! The fact that these two comments are made every single time I encounter someone I don’t even know, I realize just how little I do know about babies.

Well, Claire woke up at 4:30 and is complaining about being the in the swing. Perhaps I’ll bring her with me to fold laundry and entertain her by putting my underwear on my head, or something.