Adjusting to parenthood has been reasonably easy in most aspects, except for the overnights. I've been struggling more than Diana, because I'm pretty much non-functional from 2 to 7 a.m. We were talking about it a bit today, and Diana observed that I've always required more serious and deep sleep, whereas she can get by as a light sleeper. Of course, she's been sleeping an hour or two at a time for at least the last four months. I've always been an impossible-to-wake sleeper of six to eight hours, often augmented with a nap during the day. When I wasn't working, that was pretty typical, six hours overnight, plus an hour nap during the day.
Last night got close to being manageable, though I had a near meltdown around 3:30. My brain just shuts down and I don't know what's going on around me. That scares the hell out of me. I'm doing the bottle feeding as a supplement after breast feeding, per the doc, until Diana's milk comes in. The little guy put on a solid five or six ounces, fortunately, by doing this yesterday, and he's much happier and sleeping longer. Diana got up once with him, but I don't remember it at all. So I slept from about 3:30 to 8:30, and then I had a two-hour nap in the afternoon after doing a little shopping. I was remarkably functional all of the rest of the day.
I suspect that once I really adjust, he'll be sleeping longer anyway. I've been reading up on it, and of course it's hard to generalize what babies do. There are some methods to get him moving toward a normal circadian rhythm, which partly involve keeping him active during the day, but that probably isn't gonna happen much the first couple of weeks since he's so busy growing. I saw his cousin Mason today for the first time in a few weeks, and I couldn't believe how enormous he is at only three months. It's a little sad that Simon won't be tiny for very long!
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