Wakey, wakey, sleepy-head!

(I really need to change the title of this blog....but eventually, we shall travel again!)

Elizabeth enjoys her zzz's.

In the hospital, she got a little jaundiced and slept heavily as a result. The nurses and doctors kept telling us to wake her up to feed her, but she looked sooooo peaceful! Haven't you ever heard that you shouldn't wake a sleeping baby? I remember that episode of Friends where Rachel has just had Emma. Emma is sleeping in her bassinet and Rachel says something like "oooh! She's so cute!!! I have to wake her up and hold her!" and Phoebe says "No! Don't you know you should NEVER wake a sleeping baby?". Rachel can't resist and then Emma proceeds to cry for about 3 hours straight. Well I'll tell you right now. After 3 weeks of subscribing to this way of thinking: IT'S ALL A MYTH. Wake up that baby and feed her, otherwise you'll pay for it at night.

It's really hard to wake a baby from a deep sleep. Their limbs are all limp and their faces are all relaxed and no matter what we did, Elizabeth wouldn't wake up. This lead to lots of frustration as when we finally woke her she'd just fall asleep again while feeding.

Luckily, after about 12 days, she regained her birthweight and the Public Health Nurse that came for a home visit said we no longer have to wake her at night to feed. She can sleep as much as she wants since she's gaining weight well. Only problem now was that we had problems with the night sleep because we had subscribed to the 'Never wake a sleeping baby' myth and let her sleep so much during the day. All three of us were tired because we weren't getting any long stretches of sleep at night.

Anyways, long story short, we've fixed this 'day-for-night' switcharoo just by reducing her sleep during the day. We still have to work hard to wake her up when she gets into a deep sleep, but at night, after a good evening feeding, she'll sleep for 5 hours. I feed her again and she sleeps for another 3. Not too shabby.

Here are some pictures to show the sequence of events during the day (and this is really what most of my days consist of, at the moment):
1. I bring her down from her nap so that I can change her diaper.

2. Gradually, I try to wake her up. I talk to her, flash the camera in her face, blow on her belly...

3. Nothing is working.
4. I eventually strip her down completely so that she gets cold and then she gives me one of these looks. Bingo. She's awake and I can proceed with feeding her.
5. Then, she thanks me for it with one of these looks which says "Thank you, Mommy, for waking me up. I know I was grumpy earlier and I told you that I didn't want to wake up and that I wanted 5 more minutes, but you were right. I needed to eat something and I know that we will all appreciate it tonight when we go beddy-bye."