One nap at a time

Let me start by saying that I’ve always found it funny that any time a newborn spends sleeping is called napping since they don’t seem to care whether it’s daytime or nighttime. By the same token, I laugh every time I see one of those Instagram posts about infant schedules with “Bedtime” referring to going to sleep between 7 and 10 pm as if they don’t wake up almost as often at night as they do at daytime, or even more often. What an incredible waste of time people arguing about adequate bedtimes for babies 3-4 months and younger. But just for the sake of writing this, I’m going to call sleeping at daytime napping. 

Infants have what’s called “awake windows,” which is the maximum amount of time they can go without sleeping. I often take definitions such as that one with a grain of salt, but I’ve painfully learned this one is very real. I’ve let my infant go beyond it, and it kind of ruined our day and night when I did. They get really tired really fast, eating and pooping is hard work at that age. 

I’ve been making an effort to respect those awake windows. I’ve been working really hard on making sure my baby sleeps between feeds, always! And it has proven to be a second full-time job, first one being pumping and feeding. Apparently, even though they’re not supposed to have a developed circadian rhythm yet, my baby seems to understand it’s daytime, and he absolutely refuses to sleep for longer than 15 minutes on anything that’s not a human being. So my husband and I, mostly me, have become prisoners of the little human we just made.

The only thing keeping me sane is not thinking too much about the big picture for now and just taking one nap at a time.