Tuesday, November 28, 2006

The post that is not about aliyah

Late at night, when I'm up nursing the baby or doing things around the house, I have a habit of composing blog posts in my head. It's entertaining for me, but not really a good habit for the blog, because most of the posts that get "written" in this way never actually get as far as the computer. I've written a post on aliyah about fifty times this way, and as you may have noticed you've never actually read one. Oh well. Maybe one of these days.

Good sleep continues, at least for the moment. I don't think I am naturally superstitious but I do know better than to say, "Iyyar has finally settled and is now sleeping great, which I have every expectation he will continue to do ad meah v'esrim!" (till a hundred and twenty) Instead, I'll say that he's now been sleeping well (what I consider well anyway) for a month. Last night was great: he went to sleep at seven, woke up briefly at nine and ten and resettled quickly with a pacifier. I picked him up at 10:30, when I was about to go to sleep, and nursed him without waking him up; he went back in his crib without opening his eyes and stayed asleep till 5:30 am. Sure, I'd rather not wake up at 5:30 am, but I'll take that over five or six hours of late-night screaming any day.

On the subject of babies at night, I always find nursing a sleeping baby very amusing. If I want to nurse Iyyar and he's asleep, it's no problem. I can just pick him up, put him in the right place, and he'll get right to work, still completely asleep. Barak was the same way. I do it before I go to bed, so that the baby doesn't wake me up at 1 or 2 am because he's hungry; I also do it because if I go too long without nursing, I get too full, and that's uncomfortable. I know that if the baby regularly slept through the night the fullness would go away, but I don't want that to happen either--I'd rather keep the supply up.

Iyyar, as Barak was before him, is very businesslike about taking care of the overflow. "Too much milk, ma'am? Well, we'll get right on that." And when you're sitting up, fairly late at night, feeling pretty tired, some odd thoughts run through your head. Brrring. "Hello, Iyyar's 24-hour domestic flood management service, how can I help you? You have a surplus of milk? That'll be no problem. What's your address? We'll have a guy out to you in about half an hour. It'll be me, actually, all my other guys are... um, we're a little short-staffed tonight. All right then. Thank you." Clunk.

I'm getting more sleep than I did, but I make no claims to being fully rested or consistently coherent.

No comments: