Monday 6 November 2006

Today was a sleepless day. Rosemary woke at 7.45am and didn't sleep all day, apart from a couple of minutes, here and there.

She had a dirty nappy in the morning and the rest were wet ones. The morning was spent with Rosemary in her chair and me chatting with her while trying to do some work at the same time. Basically it would be 5-10 minutes of work, while she was happy amusing herself, followed by 15-20 minutes of chatting, singing, reading, etc. The most efficient work was done while feeding her, as we don't really tend to talk when feeding. The work was finished at lunchtime, which was a big relief, although it was only one chunk of the work, so it wasn't really the end.

Sasha calls shortly after the work was finished to see if I wanted to go for coffee in the afternoon. I was happy to do so, as I wanted to take Rosemary into town to see if she'd fall asleep from the buggy's motion and also to see if we could find a 'snot sucker' anywhere in town. (Obviously I'd be happy to go for a coffee generally, anyway, but in the olden days I wouldn't have contemplated it, when in 'deadline mode'. It's nice to be able to combine essential parts of Rosemary's care, such as going for a walk or buying nappies, with other pleasant activities, like meeting friends and families for coffee or lunch.)

We went in a bit early, so we could do the shopping first. Only needed a couple of small things from Somerfield and then it was a case of trawling through the chemists asking if they had a snot sucker. The lady in Boots knew what I was talking about, but they didn't have any - everywhere else I caused much mirth by describing what a snot sucker was. Nowhere had one, though. Oh well.

Then we met up with Sasha and had a pleasant hour and a half or so chatting. Rosemary was in her buggy for a bit at first, just looking around, then she came out for a long feed, for most of the rest of the time we were there, except 10 minutes or so near the end where she was just sitting on my lap looking around.

We then started doing a circuit of town, before Sasha realised she didn't have time to do a full circuit, or she'd be late picking her children up. So Rosemary and I just did a semi-circuit and headed home. She dropped off a bit during the walk home, but was awake before we got back.

We then spent a bit more time in the office and I managed to make a couple of work phone calls and catch up on the Internet, while feeding her. She dropped off a couple of times, again, but woke up within 30 seconds or so of dropping off. I realised that we were probably in a sleepless day, so we went down into the living room, so she could have more quality time - i.e. because we face each other and are at a similar level down there - with me. She was very awake and happy, chattering away and singing (I swear she actually sings along to songs now - albeit with single sounds, but still!).

Meanwhile Chris was blitzing the house - doing a big tidy up as a lot of things had piled up over the weekend because we'd been so busy. He was in and out to see us both. At one point he held her Rosemary so I could do some tidying (putting clean washing away) myself - I tried doing it while she lay in the middle of the bed (don't put her close to the edge anymore, as she's showing signs that she'll roll over soon), but she got upset almost immediately as she really needed proper interaction. But that's the only contribution we made!

Chris then settled in for the night shift (working), while I continued downstairs with Rosemary for a while. At about 8.30pm I felt that she was tiring, so we decamped to the bedroom (she'd got her bed clothes on at about 7.30pm), where the lights went down and the TV on (University Challenge) and she had a feed in the semi-dark. She fell asleep at about while feeding and I put her in her crib at 8.40pm and that was that, she was properly asleep. I do wonder if she might actually have gone down earlier if I'd tried it in the bedroom with the dimmed lights, but I think it's actually more that I'm learning to sense when she truly is ready for sleep.

I finished watching University Challenge to see if she would wake up, but she was clearly out for the count, so I got some food together and then went up to the office to do some work, myself. Chris or I came downstairs roughly every half hour (though sometimes more frequently) to check in on her - and she was always fine - and we could hear if she cried from upstairs. I would have preferred it if I had a proper monitor to listen to, though, and think I may invest in one, in case we have to do this again.

I worked until 2.30am, when I'd finished the parts of the work I was supposed to be doing (or, at least, the bits I could do at that point). I'd had a shower at about 10pm, so that I'd be clean for Tuesday morning and also to wake me up as I was starting to flag by that point. Rosemary hadn't woken up all that time. I expected her to wake up any second after my coming to bed, but actually didn't wake up until 4am, so that was about 7 and a half hours' straight sleep. I think it's possible that she would have gone straight back to sleep, even then, but I was there and picked her up and fed her for about 10 minutes, then she went back to sleep until about 7.45 am.

Part of me wonders if this was the start of a sleeping through the night routine, or whether it was just because she had a sleepless day and had a bad cold. I also wonder whether she slept for so long because we weren't in the room to wake her with our tossings and turnings and snuffles and snoring and so on. Who knows. I guess we'll see what happens on Tuesday.