{"id":713,"date":"2006-12-04T10:04:18","date_gmt":"2006-12-04T16:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/2006\/night-feedings\/"},"modified":"2006-12-04T11:24:18","modified_gmt":"2006-12-04T17:24:18","slug":"night-feedings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/2006\/night-feedings\/","title":{"rendered":"Night feedings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waking up to feed Lucy in the middle of the night is not my very favorite part of parenting. But neither is it my unfavorite. <\/p>\n

\"Night<\/p>\n

p{color:gray}. Photo: Naturally, we don’t have any photos of middle-of-the-night feedings, so you’ll have to settle for just a generic happy-baby shot.<\/p>\n

I know that there will be a day that Lucy gives up her nighttime feeds for good, and part of me will think back on these moments nostalgically. These can be sweet times for us, so here are a few details to refresh my memory when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m getting eight hours of sleep straight on a regular basis:<\/p>\n

* We all know that Jon is The Greatest Papa Ever, but here is some more proof: he gets up with me to get us all settled in the middle of the night. I put on my “pink fuzzy robe”:\/news\/2006\/one-week-after-delivery\/ and stretch out on the daybed. Papa hands Lucy to me, and tucks us in with blankets, hands me an extra pillow, and makes sure my water bottle is topped off. Then (hopefully) everyone snoozes for a bit while Lucy gets her snack.<\/p>\n

* After Lucy is sleeping away with a belly full of milk, I put her back into her crib and tiptoe to our bedroom. As I hang my robe up on the door hook, it sparkles with static electricity — very vivid in the dark! Papa has been warming up my side of the bed. He turns on the “running stream”:\/news\/2006\/white-noise\/, I slip my eyeshades on, and we settle down for a long winter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s night.<\/p>\n

* It is rare that I experience middle-of-the-night hunger like Lucy does. But I have been known to wake up extra-thirsty. I often find it amusing when Lucy and I snuggle down for a mid-night feed with both of us gulping away on milk and water.<\/p>\n

* Feeding Lucy on the daybed really only started after Lucy was about three months old and I was feeling very comfortable with nursing. In the early days, we would all get up and traipse out to the living room where I could station myself in the “favorite brown chair”:\/news\/2006\/the-lucy-files-october-29\/. We’d even do a diaper change, with Lucy “hollering”:\/news\/2006\/displeasure-personified\/ all the while. Once I got settled with a pillow behind me, my feet up on the ottoman, and a blanket on my legs, I was usually able to snooze through these feedings quite easily, listening to the nighttime summer sounds. After about an hour of nursing, Lucy would fall asleep so soundly that I could carry her back to her room, swaddle her, and put her in her crib all without her waking up.<\/p>\n

* These days, with Lucy taking almost all of her naps in her crib behind a closed door, “we”:\/news\/2006\/revolution-makes-me-sleepy\/ “don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t”:\/news\/2006\/at-the-marions\/ “get”:\/news\/2006\/sleepy-620\/ “to”:\/news\/2006\/sleepy-whatever\/ “watch”:\/news\/2006\/cheeky\/ “Lucy”:\/news\/2006\/soft-shoulder\/ “sleep”:\/news\/2006\/sleeping-through-the-movie\/ “very”:\/news\/2006\/sleep-smile\/ “much”:\/news\/2006\/pointilist-lucy\/ “anymore”:\/news\/2006\/lucy-wakes-up\/. This is one of my favorite parts of feeding Lucy in the wee hours: when she is all done, I get to hold her in my arms for a few minutes and watch her snooze before putting her down to sleep. Even if I was grumpy about being woken up, these moments pretty much erase any crabbiness and remind me to marvel at her.<\/p>\n

These nursing moments will end soon enough, and I’m sure Mama and Papa (and Baby!) will be glad to get more consolidated sleep. I hope I can remember to appreciate now how sweet these times are — even when Lucy wakes us more often than we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Waking up to feed Lucy in the middle of the night is not my very favorite part of parenting. But neither is it my unfavorite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}