I will survive!

That about sums up how I've been feeling most days! I am sure most mommies feel this way around the 8 week mark. Combine 8 straight weeks of barely any sleep, a baby who doesn't like to nap anywhere but my arms, who is easily overstimulated, and who gets colicky b/w 5 and 8 each evening, and that's where you end up! Exclusively breastfeeding and not baby-wising also leads to very unpredictable days. Add to that the fact that Em came 4 weeks early and we get to add 4 weeks on to any "normal" "sleeping through the night" benchmark. We are looking toward the 10 week mark for sleeping and the 12-16 week range for fussiness to die down.

In the meantime, I will rejoice and give thanks for all of the sweet moments of bonding that Emily and I are having. We get in tons of cuddle time every day, and I am thankful that when she needs this, I am able to give it to her! I am thankful for her vigor for life and her curiosity. She loves to look around her now and see what is in the room. She loves to wiggle and use her hands to grasp things, especially our shirts and my hair. I love to watch her grow and change every day! Her head, her finger nails, her little tummy- all these are getting bigger by the minute. She now tolerates bath time and diaper changes, and this has led to a lot more trust in us and more interaction during the day, too. I love that she chows down for meals just like I do. That has got to be hereditary.

I am thankful that over the course of the last week, we have had some good night sleep compared to the norm! Greg is starting to give Emily a bottle of breastmilk every night whenever she eats b/w 10 and midnight. Some nights she takes it like a champ and some she really gets upset about it. We have started transitioning her to bedtime and nighttime earlier and getting her good and tired by 7 or 7:30 each night. For a couple of nights, she has stretched her feeding out to 4 hours in between meals!! Still, at least one of those involves a diaper change which wakes her up and the bottle feeding usually gets her good and riled up, so we often have a long time before she's calm enough to fall back asleep. But when she is able to soothe more quickly, these longer stretches between feedings will mean a lot more sleep for us! These longer stretches might be attributed to us deciding to swaddle again. She still hates being swaddled, but it definitely works to calm her down and get her sleepy. We can hear her grunting throughout the night off and on, but we are learning that she does that regardless of whether she is swaddled or not. And what it does do is prevent her from flailing her arms and really getting good and awake before her tummy wakes her up instead. Hopefully as her tummy is able to take in more at one time, she'll be satisfied for a longer stretch of time. But 4 hours ain't bad though. We know her days and nights have mostly gotten switched because she still eats every 2 hours on average during the day. Some stretches are 3 hours and during the 5-8 witching hour, she likes to nurse a little every hour. It keeps her the calmest of anything we've tried, so I'm fine with that for now.

It's amazing how many nuances there are to parenting and how many little decisions you have to make in response to your own child's needs and temperament each day. No one book or friend can offer exactly the right formula for you to try. I've found that I'm soaking in as much advice and guidance as possible and then trying out different things to see what works for Emily. We really do feel a lot more confident today than we did a week ago.