Lydia Grace Barron and Molly Joy Barron

Oh Lydia, Lydia, Lydia... Why do you have your nights and days mixed up? Our sweet girl crashes after each feeding during the day, then is very alert after 10 pm when Mommy is hoping to sleep a bit herself. Her schedule at all hours of the day is to eat every 2-3 hours and then sleep, but last night for some reason she was super alert from 10 pm when I fed her until about 1:45 in the morning. It started with another case of the hiccups, of course - longest bout ever. Once those were gone, Mommy swaddled her, stroked her, placed in her bed, turned out the lights... and then listened to her make noise for the next 20 minutes until she got noisier and made it clear she wanted to get up. She acted hungry again, so I unswaddled her (she doesn't like to eat swaddled), attempted to feed her (she wasn't very interested once it was offered, though), changed her diaper, burped her, rocked her, swaddled her, placed her in bed and then the whole routine started again with her noises and wide eyes which suggested she was totally not ready to go to sleep. I'm sure you're thinking I should just let her make noise until she falls asleep, and of course I tried that, but she would make her usual and obvious feeding faces and get upset after awhile and how can I leave her there when she's telling me she's hungry? Plus she gets incresingly upset until I rescue her. Down the road I'm sure I'll have to adopt the whole "let them cry themselves to sleep" thing, but for pete's sake she's only a week and a half old, and if she tells me she's hungry, I'm going to try to feed her! Anyway, we did this whole routine about 5 times, at least, with her seeming satisfied and ready for bed, and then changing her mind. Mommy was a bit frustrated and finally started crying after 2 hours of this. By that time it was legitimately time for her to eat again so we did a normal feeding, burping, changing and swaddling session... An hour later, she was finally very groggy and ready to go to sleep for real. I placed her in bed at 1:40 AM and we both finally went to sleep within 15 minutes or so. Hallelujah. Our next feeding together was about 5:15 AM, so we did manage to get a few hours of sleep in.
I do absolutely adore her awake moments when she wants to look all around and have fun for a few before crashing the way newborns do. BUT I wish she would do it at 12:00 PM instead of 12:00 AM. :) Not every night has been like this... Some evenings have been more successful than others.
I love you Lydia Grace... You're a perfectly perfect newborn and you're just doing what babies do. You can do whatever you want. Mommy obviously hasn't had a full night's sleep since you were born and doesn't anticipate having one any time soon, but you know what? You're so worth it!! I adore you. At least this morning we got to see Daddy off to work! What a great way for him to start his day - with a Lydia smile! (More pictures coming soon.)