Sleep

For those of you who know me, you know I'm a terrible sleeper.  I'm a light sleeper, I can't sleep through noise and light is a problem.  I need a fan for white noise.  When I moved to New England from Ontario it was awful being in a different part of the time zone it gets light here at 4am in the summers and I have a terrible time sleeping when it's not dark.  Plus, Mike gets up at 4am for work and I can count on one hand the amount of times I haven't woken up when he's left for work and we've been married for almost eleven years.  Once I wake up it's hard for me to fall back asleep, sometimes it doesn't happen at all, and it takes forever for me to fall asleep in the first place.  Sometimes after Mike has fallen asleep in thirty seconds and I'm still awake thirty minutes later I'm pretty irritated!  My Dad falls asleep anywhere, anytime as well, really wish I had inherited that trait!
Therefore I was pretty worried about what would happen once I had a baby to take care of and feed in the middle of the night.  I was worried I'd be awake 24/7 and become a real live zombie who couldn't take good care of her.
I don't know if it's hormones, or the breastfeeding, but my body has adjusted.  The first week I got very little sleep because she had had some choking episodes and I was worried about how she was able to roll over on her side from day one and figured her face would get stuck against the lining of her bed so I pretty much napped a bit during the day when someone else was around and got very little sleep alone at night.  After a week of that, exhausted and crying I told Mike we had to figure something out so he called the hospital hotline and we finally got her into a good swaddle thanks to some amazing swaddling blankets made by my friend Arminta Carmichael.

My little burrito

I've been so fortunate that this girl is a great sleeper.  At night.  Daytime naps are intermittent, but if I had to pick day sleep or night sleep I'll go with night!  She likes to sleep for one long chunk.  Sometimes I have to wake HER up.  I asked my pediatrician and he said she can go for a five hour stretch once every twenty four hours.  So most nights I get four to five hours sleep in one stretch which is amazing.
As I said though, my body has amazed me by adjusting.  I can fall asleep so much quicker since she was born (and I wake up much quicker too!) and I can sometimes even fall asleep in the daytime with full sunlight.  One strange thing I notice with this new ability to sleep is the passage of time.  Whenever I tried to nap pre-Grace I'd pretty much just be lying there and I'd know exactly how much time had passed.  Now I nap and I feel like I've been asleep for ages while not as much time has passed.  This morning for instance we fell asleep around 9:45.  When I woke up I thought it must be at least noon, but it was only 10:45.
Whatever the cause of this increased ability to sleep I hope it lasts!