Sleep and a "typical" schedule

I spend a lot of time thinking about sleep since Sean was born, obsessing over it at times. I'm not sure this is true of all new parents and, I'd imagine, particularly not true for parents who have babies who just naturally sleep through the night. A typical schedule in our household (and this has been the typical schedule for the past six months or so):
- 6:30-7:30 I wake up. We all often wake up around this time but Sean has demonstrated that he is his father's child by sometimes sleeping in. Unfortunately, no matter how tired I am I don't seem to be able to.
- 8:30-9: Sean and Chris wake up when they sleep in. Chris sleeps in on weekends consistently (and sometimes later than 9), Sean is hit or miss.
- 7:30-9:30: I nurse Sean, we feed him breakfast (typically either yogurt or multigrain baby cereal), shower and whoever is working heads out the door.
- 9:45-11: Sean takes a morning nap when he is with me. Because I can nurse him to sleep and will do so to get him down earlier (especially on Tuesdays because we were taking an 11-11:45 Itsy Bitsy Yoga class and I want him to nap before we go), his naps when he is with me are earlier than the days he's with Chris.
- 10-11ish: on days that Chris is home with Sean, they often attend storytimes at the Cleveland Park library or the Monday morning singalong at Politics and Prose. Or, go shopping for more milk for Chris. :)
- 11-1:30 or 2: Sean is up and playing with me. On my days home we'll grab lunch with friends (with or without other babies)-- since Sean is sociable and we aren't able to do so much evening socializing, I use this time to catch up with folks. Sean will eat lunch-- now that he is into finger foods, I'll often bring cut up steamed veggies from last night's dinner prep with us. If we are home, he gets to eat a messy lunch of cottage cheese (he can grab the chunks). Sean takes his first nap with Chris in this time window.
- 2-4ish: Sean takes a 2nd nap on my days home-- I'll usually nurse him to sleep on our bed, then barricade him in (or read or work in bed alongside him). I've taken about 5 naps since he was born-- I just have a tough time sleeping during the day, which my mother reports has been true since age 2. His nap schedule is bumped, on average, 2 hours back when he's with Chris.
- 4-6:30: I think both Chris and I usually will take Sean to a park or on another outdoor adventure to play in the late afternoon. And, whoever is home might take a stab at starting dinner prep with varying degrees of success.
- 6:30-8:30: We prepare and eat dinner while one of us hangs out with Sean. Sean will usually divebomb at my torso when I walk in the door after a day away, so I'll start off my evening at home by feeding him. Chris has been great at supporting me to go to the gym near my office (free membership for tenants at our office bldg) so I've been doing that one day a week recently.
- 8:30-9: we start the bedtime routine: about a 20 minute bath (I get in the bathtub with him normally), then change into pajamas, 1-2 books (should note, especially for Pat, that we read lots more during the day), then I nurse him to sleep. All that probably takes 45 minutes but, if he's unusually awake and playful, it can take up to 90 minutes.
Depending on how exhausted I am I might just go to bed with Sean; I find it hard to fall asleep while he's feeding, but once he falls asleep I'll read for a bit longer and then go to bed. Or, I sometimes get some more work done-- thankfully, I've been able to shift most of my evening work conference calls to daytimes so I'm not often on the phone.
- 12-1:30: Chris comes to bed. I think there are two competing needs for us as relatively new parents-- try to "bank" some sleep in order to function for the day, or get a few hours of downtime to feel more like a "normal" human being. Obviously, I tend to choose the former and Chris the latter.
- 1:30-2:30: on a "good" night, this is the first time Sean wakes up. I'll nurse him back to sleep in 5-10 minutes.
- 4:30-5:30: Sean's second time up on a "good" night.
On the nights that aren't as "good"-- typically, when Sean is teething, he can be up every 60-90 minutes throughout the night. Again, he'll almost always go back to sleep fairly quickly but those nights are tough-- and no matter how early I go to bed, I'm dragging the next day. The days after one of those often-awake nights are when I tend to make spelling and grammatical errors while writing (hopefully I catch them before others do but not always, as in the case for the Evite for Sean's birthday party-- though our friend Jeff is a professional editor so he is trained to spot that sort of thing), or I will have a hard time finding the right word (one I know for sure) when speaking. Hopefully I'm not too irritable but just low-key, but I'm guessing I can be both.
Given that neither Chris or I have had any (in my case) or barely any (in Chris' case) full night's sleeps for the last year, we are doing a pretty good job of not being too crabby with each other. I'd say maybe monthly we are a bit snippy (rather than annually before we had Sean) and, given Chris' wonderfully mellow disposition (when not talking about the GOP at least), it always catches me a bit by surprise when he is a bit short-tempered. A decent night's sleep will "cure" it for us, I think. But, our schedule doesn't allow for much if hardly any quality time together for us as a couple, though we've been able to go on about 6 dates (including tennis last Sunday) in the past year. It's a good thing we knew each other and had spent a lot of time together during the first 15.5 years of our relationship, though I do "miss" him despite the fact I see him every day.
There are plenty of babies who naturally, or because they are "trained" (which we had no interest in doing for the first year), sleep through the night by now. We just don't happen to have one of them. And, I wouldn't trade Sean's loving and happy disposition for a full night's sleep for anything.

Or, at least, on most days.

So, if you notice I can't spell, or I'm incoherent in conversation, I'd like to think that it's a temporary thing and, most likely, it's because I was up a lot the night before. Or, that it was always a problem but now I've got something to pin it on. That would be the correct response to the question "why is Merrie always spilling and dropping stuff?"

A quick report on our increasingly mobile guy: Sean now pulls himself up to standing using whatever props he can find: tables, walls, elastic waist pj's that instead might be pulled down. He "cruises" around, using furniture to walk around, and will happily stand using just one hand to steady himself. He'll occasionally stand and not hold anything for a few seconds, but no walking yet.
Since we don't have stairs in our cosy one-bedroom apartment, he hasn't had much practice climbing stairs but, during occasional tries at it, has gotten up a few steps. I need to be more deliberate about finding him opportunities to practice climbing more.
If you are reading this, you are invited to Sean's first birthday party on Saturday, October 31, starting at noon at Rock Creek Park Picnic Area #1 (at Pierce Mill). Here (I think) is a link to the Evite: http://www.evite.com/app/publicUrl/YVJGUEMALPCLAOVZQFAH/SeanBirthday. Or, I can send this to you directly.
We're off to cheer on Meghan during her run in the Marine Corps Marathon on a gorgeous fall day, and spend time with Pat and Jeff (who is running a 10k) on Day Two of their 10-day or so East Coast Adventure. We're lucky that we get to see so many great friends and family members so often!
Love to all!