Dexter
29 Nov 2004, 11:56am
So, those of you who are parents....how many of you ever had to go for midnight baby drives with a wide-awake baby...?
I have just returned from one, at about 0215 hrs.
This was with my youngest daughter, the 7 month old. My 20 month old went through a stage with this, a couple of months long, which started around the same age (coincidentally, teething is in high gear for most babies around this time....well, not coincidentally, I believe the 2 items to be intrinsically related....) This is the first time my youngest has needed a midnight drive with Daddy to get back to sleep....I'm hoping that she goes through a lot less of this than her older sister did. Although really, with my oldest, we only went out about a dozen times or so over a few months, so not so bad...I know people who had to do it a couple of times per week for weeks on end with their babies!
Oh, and the title is misleading. Rarely does a parent depart at midnight for a baby drive. It's usually at a much more inconvenient time in terms of the parental sleeping pattern, such as between 0100 and 0400.... :rolleyes: We left tonight around 0115 and got back around 0215, but I have done 0300 to 0400 drives before...
And just for fun, tonight's drive was preceeded by a 0030 wake-up of by my older daughter, who needed some juice and some back rubbing to go back to sleep.
For those of you who are not parents yet, take note: There is a certain knack of timing that is important to baby drives. You have to time it so that when they fall asleep, you can be back home within 15 to 20 mins. Too much sooner, and they are not deeply enough asleep, and the car door closing, the jostling around in the car seat, etc, will wake them back up. Too much later, and the opposite condition may cause the same end result: they may have slept just long enough to feel like they have a good nap, and the noise and movement will wake them up. Then you are back to square one, with a wide awake baby...and a tired parent or two... It takes a few tries to get the timing just right, results may vary depend on the baby in question. Oh, and the other trick is figuring out when they are actually asleep without being able to see them due to the rear-facing car seat....:shakehead
One of the hardest things I find about baby drives is like what happened tonight. After getting my little bundle of love safely into her crib, still snug in her car seat, I found myself WIDE AWAKE. If I am lucky, I may be asleep by 0300, in time to get about 2 or 3 hours of sleep before one of them wakes up. You know, in my teens and 20's I could get by on 2 or 3 hours of sleep for several nights on end. In my mid-30's, I can do it for for a night or two, then I find that I am just too damn old for that...Here's hoping my littlest one does not make this a recurring habit... ;)
Anyways, I think I am getting sleepy now, so I'm off to bed. Anyone got any middle of the night baby-driving stories to share...?
Dexter...
I have just returned from one, at about 0215 hrs.
This was with my youngest daughter, the 7 month old. My 20 month old went through a stage with this, a couple of months long, which started around the same age (coincidentally, teething is in high gear for most babies around this time....well, not coincidentally, I believe the 2 items to be intrinsically related....) This is the first time my youngest has needed a midnight drive with Daddy to get back to sleep....I'm hoping that she goes through a lot less of this than her older sister did. Although really, with my oldest, we only went out about a dozen times or so over a few months, so not so bad...I know people who had to do it a couple of times per week for weeks on end with their babies!
Oh, and the title is misleading. Rarely does a parent depart at midnight for a baby drive. It's usually at a much more inconvenient time in terms of the parental sleeping pattern, such as between 0100 and 0400.... :rolleyes: We left tonight around 0115 and got back around 0215, but I have done 0300 to 0400 drives before...
And just for fun, tonight's drive was preceeded by a 0030 wake-up of by my older daughter, who needed some juice and some back rubbing to go back to sleep.
For those of you who are not parents yet, take note: There is a certain knack of timing that is important to baby drives. You have to time it so that when they fall asleep, you can be back home within 15 to 20 mins. Too much sooner, and they are not deeply enough asleep, and the car door closing, the jostling around in the car seat, etc, will wake them back up. Too much later, and the opposite condition may cause the same end result: they may have slept just long enough to feel like they have a good nap, and the noise and movement will wake them up. Then you are back to square one, with a wide awake baby...and a tired parent or two... It takes a few tries to get the timing just right, results may vary depend on the baby in question. Oh, and the other trick is figuring out when they are actually asleep without being able to see them due to the rear-facing car seat....:shakehead
One of the hardest things I find about baby drives is like what happened tonight. After getting my little bundle of love safely into her crib, still snug in her car seat, I found myself WIDE AWAKE. If I am lucky, I may be asleep by 0300, in time to get about 2 or 3 hours of sleep before one of them wakes up. You know, in my teens and 20's I could get by on 2 or 3 hours of sleep for several nights on end. In my mid-30's, I can do it for for a night or two, then I find that I am just too damn old for that...Here's hoping my littlest one does not make this a recurring habit... ;)
Anyways, I think I am getting sleepy now, so I'm off to bed. Anyone got any middle of the night baby-driving stories to share...?
Dexter...