sleep

I am still trying to figure out what to make of this whole baby sleep schedule thing. It seems to change daily. In the beginning, as to be expected, Laurelei slept all the time. She was awake maybe a solid 3 hours a day if you added up all the awake time together. Now granted, because of her thalassemia she is supposed to be easily worn out, but there was literally NO getting her on a sleep schedule back then. Trying to keep her up when she needed sleep was impossible. She was quite insistent that none of that "babywise" schedule stuff would work for her. 

So time passed and we got used to Laurelei being awake more and more, taking about a 2-3 hr nap in the daytime sleeping about 7:00-pm to 4:30am at night and starting all over again. We were overjoyed when she started making the jump from a 4:30 wake up to a 5:30-6:30 wake up. 

But as time continued to pass, she seemed to require less and less sleep, until it was obvious that our 5 month old baby was the sole infant in the world to require absolutely no napping at all. She would nod off here and there but refuse to sleep. She would not be tricked into lying down for a feeding or taking a spin around the block. Beyond that, she started staying up till 9:30/ 10:00 pm and waking up still around 6. 

(I love that when she naps, she literally has to lie ON TOP OF julius)

This did not last long, as you can imagine a baby needs her sleep. But it seems we have gone form little to no napping to a full blown newborn state once more. I decided what while I was on a break from school I would get the baby on a nap schedule to make it easier when she finally goes to a sitter this fall. After one day of instituting the lay in your bed awake and take a nap thing, she is a pro. All she wants to do is get in her bed with her blankie and Julius (her best friend aka stuffed dog from Edinburgh) and roll around until she falls asleep. As I type now, she is on her second nap of the day. While the time to get things done around the house has been nice, and I am now considering the possibility that this much sleep is not quite what she should be doing at her age. Perhaps I should not have made the idea of naptime in her crib so appealing? 

Hopefully tomorrow we can strike more of a balance.