catch up #4: sleep?

Audrey's on-again, off-again sleep schedule continues to dominate our house, resulting in scenes like this being all too common. This is from early October, but it just as well could have been last night. I've learned that when tired enough, I can fall asleep just about anywhere, in any array of bizarre positions:



This is just one of those areas where our decision to do things a little differently makes it harder on ourselves in the short run. We just can't imagine letting her cry alone in her room though. It's not in our nature. So instead, we get up and go hold her, rock her, nurse her, whatever it takes to get her through the night. She tends to sleep in small chunks, anywhere from 1-5 hours. On very rare occasions she's made it all night without waking up at all, but they've been few and far between. An average night still has three wakeups between 10 pm and 5 am. Hosanna and I trade off as much as possible. It's strained our relationship a bit, frankly, because it's really hard to muster the energy to work together as a team when we're both bleary-eyed, grumpy, and desperate for some time off.

We stick to it though, out of the conviction that in the long run, our approach will pay dividends.