Thursday, January 26, 2006

Sleeping on a full stomach

Baby's got a new habit; because she's usually not hungry when she wakes up, and because she normally has really short naps, she now has a tendency to be ready for her feed and her sleep at the same time.

Having a baby who's hungry and tired at the same time isn't ideal, because she can be too tired to feed and too hungry to sleep. Hmmm...

Usually I manage to feed her a few minutes before putting her down for her nap. Otherwise I do her nap routine, leave the room and then have to re-enter five minutes later because she's just decided she's hungry after all.

Is this a bad thing?

Well, the good thing is that she'll sleep better because she's got a full tummy. It also means minimal cry-time before she falls asleep, because she's nice and relaxed.

The bad thing is that I fear she's developed an association between feeding and sleeping, and that's going to get in the way of her sleeping-training. It also means that maybe she won't feed unless she's ready to sleep (maybe that's why she's never hungry when she wakes up in the morning). So in the near future when she needs only one or two naps during the day, maybe she'll only want food once or twice a day.

Despite my worries, I'm glad that today she's had nice long naps. At long last, she's napping like those babies in the parenting books (not that I'm reading them any more, oh no, but if there's one lying around the house then it's just a waste not to leaf through it...). It's such a pleasure to watch her play with her daddy in the evenings and not be overtired already.

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