Week 6 - Baby dreams

Week 6 Picture

This last week may have marked the first time that baby Jay gave a social smile! The reason why we can't be sure is that babies have a hilarious tendency to smile when they fart. As such, we can't be confident that the smile means he's happy to see me quite yet. He might just be gassy. Still, those small flashes of positive social interaction gave me as much of a rush as anything I've ever experienced. I can't wait for the day when he's old enough to tell me that he loves me. Hopefully they last awhile before reaching the days he tells me he hates me...

His favorite way for me to hold him.

In other news, I'm happy to report that my optimistic outlook from my last post was well placed. Changing to a shift-style sleep system where Kimbre and I switch off baby duty at predictable intervals throughout the night has done wonders for reducing the torment of what were quickly becoming exhausting and frustrating nights. 

It's amazing how the luxury of a few hours of guaranteed sleep can make the rest of the night much more bearable. Still, it's hard to say how much of that is the system and how much of it was him just learning to sleep better. Babies change really, really fast. Times where I feel that I have him figured out are painfully short lived. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to try. Clearly, I'm not alone in this regard. See for yourself. Google any silly baby problem (e.g. my baby grunts and farts in his sleep) and I bet you that you will find as many solutions and recommendations for how to resolve or address the issue as there are parents to give them. For how many babies there have been throughout history (literally billions), it's remarkable how little we know about them. I guess that's half the fun.

One of the less savory side effects of all this extra sleep I'm getting is that my subconscious mind has a lot more time to find creative ways to torture me. Without fail, anytime I get more than two hours of sleep, I am eventually woken up to the horrible feeling that I dozed off with baby Jay in the sheets in bed with me. In my half lucid state, I scramble to get him free before he suffocates. After a few minutes of this, I realize it's simply a pillow that is tangled in the sheets and that he is either safely asleep in his bassinet next to the bed or is upstairs with his mom. My relief quickly turns into embarrassment and frustration at the fact that this happens every. Single. Time. Hopefully, like everything else, this is a phase that will pass on it's own soon. Until then, I will remain steadfast in my mission to make sure that no pillow suffocates on my watch.