Was it too good to be true?

John and I have spent the last two weeks, since Hope's birth, telling people what a good sleeper, eater, baby she is. Then last night happened. It's like Hope suddently woke up and said: Hey, I'm a newborn. I'm supposed to make life a living hell for these people between the hours of 10:00 pm and 8:00 am.

It all started out as usual for Hope. Sleeping through supper and into the evening. She woke up around 9:00 and I fed her. Then she didn't go back to sleep until around 2:00. She wasn't even crying during that time though. The last three days she has had battles with gas. It doesn't make her cry but it does keep her unsettled, wanting to feed constantly (for solace I think) and makes her grunt like nobody's business. Until last night we were able to plunk her into her bed and within a couple of minutes she would be asleep with little or no fussing. Last night, after feeding her too many times to count, I'd plunk her in and then listen to a symphony of grunts, groans, fist sucking that rivalled many pig babies I've encountered. Well, maybe not the fist sucking. It was enough to keep John and I awake anyway and enough to drive us crazy. Every time I was back up and trying to get her settled. John stepped in to take over around midnight and had her sleep on top of him for an hour before trying her bed again. Within 8 minutes she was awake and sucking that damn fist!

I was back up, tried to feed her, but she was so tired she just fell asleep, then back in her bed. Two minutes later, awake. I jumped up, probably swore, put the bathroom fan on for some white noise and boom, she was asleep and slept until around 5:30 or so. Okay, so sometimes you think that you learn everything you need to know about babies after the first one (ie white noise) and sometimes your brain shuts down at 2:00 am.

After the last night feeding of 5:30, I put her back in her bed and decided to just ride through the grunting to see where it took me. After about 5-10 minutes, she was asleep and slept until around 8:45. Hmmm. This could mean that the hours of sleeplessness last night could have been avoided with 5-10 minutes of patience. I'm not going to overanalyze this or speculate. That could send me round the bend.

I've also realized that Hope has gone from very quiet go-to-sleeper to very loud grunter. She will wake up occasionally, grunt, and go back to sleep. The problem here is that she sleeps in a basket right beside our bed. I could move her into her own room but then I'd have to rely on her crying to tell me she is hungry and I don't want Emily to be disturbed, or I'd have to use a monitor which would totally defeat the purpose of getting her out of our room so we could sleep.

Well, I guess it was bound to happen eventually that we'd lose a night of sleep. Can't miss out on all the fun.