Sleeeeeeeeeeeep...

I love sleep. Sleep is the reward at the end of every day. Sleep is the best treat I can think of. I sung the praises of sleep long before becoming pregnant and having a child... really, truly, I love sleep more than anything. Except my newborn baby. I think.

There was one other instance in my life when my sleep was this fragmented. When I was a grad student at ASU, I spent a lot of time grading papers and very little time sleeping. One semester was particularly rough: 5-15 pages of math stuff for ~70 students, every other week... the only way to get through it was to do it all at once and through the night. I'd grade as many assignments as I could stand, sleep for about 3 hours, get up, and grade some more. 3 hours seems to be my natural nap duration. More than that and I wish I'd had a full night's sleep. Less than that, and, well, I'd wake up confused about what day of the week it was. 3 hours. I like 3 hours of sleep.

Lately Jack's been on ~1.5 hour stretches at night, nursing at 11pm, 1, 3, 5 and 7am. Miserable. 1.5 hours of sleep is really, really tough. I'd be happy to "nap when the baby naps" (I can fall asleep in about 30 seconds flat, under any circumstances), except that little Jack is only napping in 30 minute intervals these days, and if there's anything worse to me than sleep deprivation at night, it's a 20 minute nap. I need more than 20 minutes at a time. To make matters even more exhausting, on Sunday and Monday he was wanting to nurse all the time... like every hour, all day long. (Ouch!).

We're hoping that the rapid decline in Jack's sleeping habits is due to a growth spurt. Babies go through regular growth spurts, during which they nurse very frequently. This gets them more calories and also helps boost mom's milk supply. The funny thing about growth spurts is that they happen at predictable times... at 7-10 days, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, and 6 weeks. Jack turned 6 weeks on Sunday, so that would put him on schedule for a growth spurt.

Jack slept really well last night (3.5 hours, twice!!!) and napped for long periods of time today (3, 2 and 2 hours... amazing!). Maybe it will carry through to tonight? We'll see.

Good thing he's so snuggly ;) It makes up for a lot of sleep deprivation.