Sleep Deprived

Sleep is a wonderful thing! At least that is what I hear. I will let you know how I feel about it when I can experience it for myself...

Natalie has never been a good sleeper. I know, you are probably thinking "what do you expect Jeff, she is a baby?". Well, yes, I understand that there will be some issues from time to time with any child, but she has had more than most. The first 5 months of her life found me often awake with her for several hours in the middle of the night while she cried and screamed. then we transitioned to the point where she would sleep, but it came in spurts of an hour or two and the wake ups lasted for 15 or 20 minutes. Even that doesn't sound too bad if she did it for a long time, but she has never slept very long at night and her naps were even more irregular and short if they existed at all.

Now to be fair - she has improved greatly in the last couple months. In fact, she is probably averaging waking up only 1-3 times a night lately which has been a nice change. But the last three nights she has had a fever and not slept well. Last night I personally did pretty good and probably got a total of about six hours, which is good compared to the 3-4 hours of the previous nights.

So what is my point? I love sleep! It is incredibly challenging on so many levels to function consistently on much less sleep than I would ideally choose. I am exhausted. I look forward to when the next child is born in about 7 weeks because I think it should all get much better with two kids around!