This picture has nothing to do with this post, except that it was taken at sunset from my back porch - the very back porch of the house where these events took place. Kind of like looking at a picture of Paris while listening to a Tale of Two Cities.

When Nick was a little baby we had sleep issues. I was frustrated because most of the books that I read focused on getting your child to fall asleep. But Nicholas didn't have any trouble falling asleep. It was STAYING asleep. He would sleep for 40 minutes, or maybe an hour, then wake up. I found myself feeding him, changing him, and rocking him back to sleep around 5 or 6 times a night. Eventually things got better, and now Nick is a great sleeper. He still wakes up at night, but it has - for the most part - become a rare event. When I found out I was pregnant again the one big thing I hoped for was that this next kid would sleep better than Nick did when he was little.

God has a sense of humor. I really do beleive this. Whatever there is out there ruling the universe, whatever you call God, is laughing at me right now.

Nathan sleeps. He can sleep for hours. Sometimes, during the day, he will sleep for almost 4 hours at a time. I consider this to be amazing, especially since he's so little. It is also frustrating since I'm supposed to be feeding him more often than every 4 hours, and since he seems to wake up almost as soon as Nick falls asleep for a nap. Ha ha. Joke's on me, right? But wait. That's not the funny part. The funny part is that I can not for the life of me get Nate to fall asleep. Once he DOES fall asleep, he'll sleep for hours... unless it's at night and I put him down in his little bassinet. Then he wakes up almost immediately or starts this really scary choking on spitup thing that makes me pick him up again. He will fall asleep nursing and wake up as I put him down. He will sleep only if he's nursing in bed with me. If I try to move him he will wake up, and I will more than likely have to change a diaper. During the day a feeding can stretch to fill two hours as I feed him, put his sleeping body down, only to have him wake the second my hands leave his body.

If Nate were an only child I would carry him all the time and nurse him all the time and we would have no issues. But the fact is, he is NOT an only child. He has an older brother who also requires diaper changes and food of some sort and someone to take away the sharp and pointy thing he just found and replace it with something just as fun and distracting. I do not ha ve time to let Nate nurse all day.

What it boild down to is that - even though Nate wakes only twice during the night, each wake-up time stretches into hours. With Nick still faithfully waking at 6am every morning, I sometimes get more than 4 hours of sleep, none of it together, most of it on my side squashed between my husband and Nate (who knew a newborn could take up so much room in the bed?)

I know it will get better. I also know it might possibly get worse before it gets better. But eventually Nathan will reach the sleeping at least 6 hours phase and I won't even be tempted to wake him up and feed him. But for now I am a walking zombie.