Baby Sleeping Too Much 6 Weeks

If nothing else works, cuddle. Most babies love being cuddled. They can be so full of food they look as though they will burst. They can be amused and entertained to the point of coma. They can gurgle at brightly coloured pieces of plastic attached to their cot for only so long. But they can't be cuddled enough. They crave physical affection. Some fathers find it hard to give, maybe because they weren't given enough themselves when they were babies. That was the wisdom then; we know better now. Even if it is colic and the baby won't stop crying for three months, you will glean the benefit of all that cuddling when the colic does subside. 
 

Baby Sleeping Too Much 6 Weeks

One day the baby will look up at you and smile, and everything will be as it should be. And the baby will never know that on 63 separate occasions you wanted to throw it out of the window. (Unless you did throw it out of the window.) If you can learn to comfort your baby as well as your partner can - which usually only takes perseverance and the will to do it - you will be amazed by how satisfying it is. 

Some fathers discover, to their vain delight, that they are better at comforting their child than their partners. It helps to be as relaxed as possible as you rock them out of their misery and, with luck, into a long deep sleep. I find that half a bottle of red wine helps, but each to his own.

Sleep

A newborn baby knows no night, knows no day. For a while you will be in the same terrible state of flux. It's like infinite jetlag. New parents talk of little else. Newish parents start talking about something else, then give up and go back to sleep deprivation. They are too tired to think. Their feet drag, their shoulders slump. Their eyes are like pissholes in the snow. Their babies, needless to say, are full of life and energy. The babies are getting the sleep they need. It's the parents who are losing their minds, their youth, their grip on reality. 

You think you look rough now? Look again in a year's time. Your closest relatives won't know it's you - and not because you'll have had plastic surgery and fled the country to avoid your responsibilities. The shitty nappies may not get to you; the lack of sleep will.

I am writing this on a Wednesday morning. The last four nights I have had five hours, six hours, four and a half hours and five and a half hours' sleep respectively. My daughter is four and a half, and my son will soon be two. We should be past the worst of it by now. But we aren't. Sadly I had a bit to drink last night I am therefore a little hungover and rather bad-tempered. In the mirror this morning I looked older than my late grandfather. After lunch I shall go to the local public library, where there's an unusually comfortable armchair ...

This post will be split into handy gobbet-sized chunks for the convenience of sleep-deprived parents who may not be able to digest more than a single paragraph at a time.
 
THEY SLEEP AND THEY SLEEP AND THEY SLEEP 

It's true - newborn babies sleep an awful lot. On average, according to Desmond Morris, they snooze for 16 hours and 36 minutes every day. This figure starts to fall almost immediately, but even five-year-olds should put in twelve solid hours. And yet newborn baby sleep is a fragile thing. Between half and two-thirds of it is light sleep, from which they can wake depressingly easily. 

Even the way they go to sleep is different. As overworked adults, we can hit the pillow, pass out and be snoring like warthogs within eight to ten seconds. Babies, by contrast start with 20 minutes or so of light sleep before descending into big fat sleep, and it is only then that they truly settle. You may have to rock your little one and/or sing rude songs to ease the passage into deep sleep. Only when their eyes have stopped twitching is it safe to leave the room. Then you step on the creaky floorboard outside, and the whole process begins again. To find out more, you can check out Baby Sleeping Too Much 6 Weeks.