Mar
04

In the past 36 hours, I had 10 minutes off baby-duty. I hate that. And I hate that I hate that. (Though the later far less than the former.)

I talked to Jason about it this morning, and he doesn’t really get it. He was talking about how I need to learn to chill out and let her play in the pack and play or by herself for a little while. While I’m fairly AP, she likes to play by herself, and I’m happy to let her do that. But I’m still on-duty. I still have to be “ready” to respond if something happens. It’s not like I can just go take a walk around the block and leave her behind. And I don’t think he realizes that, when you have to be “on-standby” for so many hours in a row (21, most days – from 8pm to 5pm) that standby is significantly more energy requiring than “off”.

This is exacerbated by how I choose to get Daphne to go to sleep. I go to bed with her. I don’t expect to do this forever, of course, but it is part of how I’m encouraging her to learn to sleep unswaddled and without being bounced. She’s not one to easily self-soothe herself to sleep. (She self-soothes to things like feet-clapping. Silly girl.) That means that I don’t get that time in the evening when she’s asleep. (Of course, I’d still be “on-standby” in case she woke up…) But I’m usually tired enough in the evening that I really don’t mind being in bed for a long time.

But then I get up and have her all day. And this is one thing we’re going to try changing – when Daphne gets up, Jason gets her for a little bit. If only half an hour, I get *something* of a break between the night-watch and the day-watch. I think this may help with my sanity. I hope it does.

We’re also going to try putting her to bed earlier. Well, I am. Jason is of a mind to let her stay up if she’s staying awake in the dark room, but I think it just makes the problem worse. I get to take lead on this one, so, we’re going with the earlier bed time. For two weeks. We’ll see how that goes.

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