Allie slept clear through the night, and Dodo was pretty great, too. He yowled for the first time in days when Allie was doing her 22 minutes of screaming. Poor guy; I think she gave him a bigger headache than he already has. So since the stepdaughter is on a 2-week trip with her college’s performing choir, and Dodo was good, and Allie was good, oh no, whatever will keep Cindy up? The answer was unexpected: the smoke detector alarm in our bedroom started a caustic loud chirp every 2 minutes at 5:30am. It must be low on battery. I feared it would chirp every 2 minutes until we replaced the battery, keeping me from sleeping and keeping the baby from sleeping. Mr. W had to get up, go to the garage, get a giant ladder, and remove the unit from our high bedroom ceiling.

I pumped while he got ready and ate breakfast downstairs. When I went down to store the milk, I wanted to make sure we were okay, as he was irritated at me about my wanting him to do something immediately about the chirping. He thinks I have too much control but am not realizing it. I feel I don’t have enough control because the baby still isn’t napping to her little heart’s content without being woken up by external noise. I’m hoping the noise sensitivity is just a phase so that I can stop going crazy when the neighbors and their kids are yelling and banging stuff outside. I’m not trying to control things cuz I’m on a power trip; I truly want what’s best for my baby, and I see her when she’s woken up prematurely from a nap. She’s tired, cranky, rubbing her eyes, yawning. Plus, I don’t get much of a break if she only sleeps half an hour every 3 hours. How would I eat/wash pump parts/do chores/pay bills/relax? Mr. W says that she’s getting more than sufficient sleep; she wouldn’t be all smiley when we’re out, charming strangers left and right, if she were sleep-deprived. She’d be wailing 5 hours like she did the first couple of months before I figured out that I ought to nap her regularly. That was a new thought to me. I’d read that a baby Allie’s age needs 15 hours of sleep a day; 10-11 overnight, 5-6 in the day divided into 3 naps. She gets close to 11 hours overnight (waking for brief feedings and going back to sleep doesn’t count against these 10-11 hrs), but her naps are nowhere near 5-6 hours. She’s lucky if she gets over an hour in more than 1 nap a day. I’m ecstatic when she hits 1.5 hours twice in her 3 naps, altho occasionally she’d get 2, 2.5 hours in a nap, too. What she has more of are 45-minute naps, and I am seriously bummed if she has a 30-minute one, which isn’t that uncommon, either. She’s still yawning after those. Multiple references on sleep have said that at this age, under an hour doesn’t count because it’s not restorative. Depending on the kid, 45 minutes is a “maybe.” That’s why my anxieties run crazy high before she’s reached and crossed the 30-minute vulnerable-to-waking point.

Now that it’s spring weather, 6-7 screaming elementary school-age children have decided to hang out together in our cul de sac, gathering at 3pm or so. If I can get 2 good naps in by then, I’m less anxious. But it’s a loooong stretch from then until her bedtime if she doesn’t get the afternoon nap, and being wired from being up too long is NOT good for bedtime.

I still feel desperately, desperately in need of a break. The baby needs a pause button. And a sleep button. Mr. W told me to schedule a massage and/or a pedicure for myself over the weekend and he’ll just bottlefeed the baby, but I have a problem leaving her that long because I’m afraid she wouldn’t nap for him, would get fussy, and irritate him. He said he had both his kids from when they were very very young for entire weekends completely on his own and they survived. I had thought she couldn’t get used to him and would need me to nap her, because he’d said before that I had her in a specific falling asleep method that he couldn’t replicate so that she wouldn’t go to sleep on him. This morning he said babies can get used to different people and different methods if we expose her to these differences. Oh. I hope he’s right.

She woke up earlier than usual at 7:15a this morning, but didn’t cry or call, as usual. I heard her talking to herself. I went in and she acted like she was still happy to see me. I hope I don’t have to repeat the crying out again tonight, but last night probably wasn’t the last time we’d be doing it. Since she got up early, which I encouraged to get her on daylight savings time, she is taking her first nap early. It’s been 31 minutes so far. *crossing fingers*