What a Lack of Sleep Does

Joash is quite a good sleeper. This is partly due to his jaundice and hematoma, but I do hope that it is also just a part of a his personality as well. I am a person who needs my sleep. My mom like to tell the story about how when I was little I would ask if I could go bed. So, yes, I like my sleep and I hope that my son takes after me.

But as all new parents know, sleep is usually not part of the equation when you have a newborn. And with Joash's weight loss, we have been needing to wake up every three hours to wake up Joash to feed him. so our sleep is broken up into 1 1/2 to 2 hour chunks during the night.

Since we have been needing to supplement Joash at every feeding, our routine at night has been that I get up and nurse Joash. Then, when I am nearing the end of the nursing time, I call Wilbert so that he can get Joash's bottle ready. Wilbert then feeds Joash his bottle, changes Joash's diaper and settles him back in bed. A pretty good system we think, but we have some pretty clear signs that we are running low on sleep.

The biggest one is that we both wake up and think that Joash is in our bed with us. He never is, but for some reason, this is a big fear we have. Wilbert has asked several times when I wake him if I have Joash with me, which I always do since I am feeding him. He has also thought that our blankets were Joash's clothes. Last night I woke up and had to reach over to Wilbert's other side to make sure Joash was not there. He wasn't. But for some reason, I really thought Wilbert had taken Joash into our bed.

Hopefully, once his weight stabilizes, we will be able to get sleep in some longer stretches and get over some of these silly notions.

And now some cute pictures of a sleeping Joash. These pictures were taken about 10 minutes apart. It amazes me how active he can be while sleeping. But, it is pretty cute.

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The Talens' Tales

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