On sleep

 Hi! How are you! It's me! Typing with 2 hands because I have 25 minutes before Dorothy and Cooper wake up, and Minnie is sleeping in my bed where I am not. I cannot tell you how huge this is-- usually, she ONLY SLEEPS ON ME for ALL OF HER SLEEPING NEEDS.

While I love this so much and recognize how fleeting it is, it is also SUPER OVERWHELMING.

Technically, she is sleeping through the night because some idiot decided that sleeping through the night means a stretch of 6-9 hours. Unfortunately for me, her stretch is from 8-ish to 2-ish, and I don't go to bed until like 11. Also, she spends the first 3 hours sleeping in my arms on the couch. WHICH I LOVE, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't necessarily feel like through the night, you know? She has had nights here and there where she sleeps until 4 and skips the 2, and those have been amazing. But other nights, she is awake off and on from 8-10 and STILL wakes up at 2, and sometimes, no matter when she falls asleep, she adds in a  12:30 feed just for fun.

I thought for awhile that side-lying and sort of not moving much to feed her would give her the idea that it's bedtime but all that does is make her grunt and burp for like 40 minutes after she eats, so I have to haul myself up and feed normally, burp, etc. It's better for HER, and she falls right back to sleep, but then my old lady insomnia kicks in, and by the time I am finally asleep after the 2:00, she is up for a 4:30 or 5 am snack. The 5 am snack is THE WORST for me because it's hard to sleep again before Ben's alarm and my need to have one quiet cup of coffee before all hell breaks loose. Minnie east one side very efficiently and is asleep within 7 minutes, and I get maybe one quarter of one more sleep cycle for me. (I am very good at falling instantly to sleep in the 4's-- I have no idea why, but when I had postpartum insomnia after Harry was born, I always knew that 4 am would see me snoring).

Basically, even though she sleeps well, I am getting 3 good hours and then SLEEP SCRAPS.  It's hard to be this old and parenting a newborn. Or! Maybe the perimenopause insomnia would have me sleeping like this anyway, so now at least I also get a baby?

And this baby! I don't even have words to describe how perfectly wonderful she is. She has made us all happier than we have any right to be in the middle of a global disaster.

She smiles, she coos. She laughed once at Ben, and she laughs in her sleep, so that's coming. She can ALMOST roll from front to back when she's on her tummy. She LOVES listening to her older siblings. She cannot sleep when she hears Dorothy's voice no matter how soft it is-- that's how much she loves Dorothy. Harry wants to be in charge of her all the time. Jack is impossibly sweet with her and can make her go from crying to cooing in moments. And Cooper! Cooper just has to appear in her line of vision, and she talks and talks to him. He says they have a special bond, and I think they might!

Ok-- I have 3 minutes to chug another cup of coffee before it's time to start our asynchronous learning day. Here are a few pics from yesterday (costume change due to diaper blowout).