Growth spurts = suffering.

Really, if this is not a temporary growth spurt or something, I swear I'm going to... I dunno, take extra naps or something. Or dive into an entire cheesecake in desperation. Something terrible, anyway. For the past three or four nights, Jim has been getting up every single hour on the hour and requiring half an hour of nursing. I've gotten maybe eight hours of sleep in the last four nights combined.


Jim is exhausted, too.

This goes for days as well. He doesn't want to nurse quite so much during the day, but he is extremely unwilling to take naps. This means that I also cannot take naps. I am actually light-headed when I stand up from lack of sleep. I know he's not sick or starving to death or anything - he's still pleasant and happy and chubby. He just will not SLEEP.

I've read that babies are supposed to get a growth spurt around six weeks, so hopefully that's what this is and it'll be over soon. I would thank this kid on bended knee if he'd just go back to waking up a mere three times a night. Seriously, they use this kind of thing as torture.


You can barely tell I'm almost dead from sleep deprivation, right?

Still, there are benefits to all of this growing. He's getting ridiculously strong, for one thing. He can hold his head pretty steady when we're holding him upright, and his tummy time is become terribly impressive, what with all the head-elevation and grunting and whatnot.


The next Mr. Olympia, folks.

We've also made some breakthroughs in communication. He seems to take more notice of us now. When I go into his room and talk to him while he's fussing for food, he instantly calms down ("Oh good, food's here."). Yesterday he actually cooed at me when I was making silly noises at him. Normally he tries to be secretive and coo quietly to himself when he thinks no one is listening. He was super smiley and happy, so we took a walk around the house and discovered that he loves mirrors and is terribly impressed by cat noises.


Bruce is less impressed with Jim than Jim is with Bruce.

All in all, it's not so bad. I really feel almost guilty for complaining about being up all night with my cheerful quiet baby when I know there are plenty of people who are up all night with their inconsolable screaming babies, but what's a blog for if not for airing mildly unreasonable grievances? I just hope this is a phase so I can have my proverbial* cake and eat it too - I really would like a happily sleeping baby just for a couple hours.

*I'd take real cake too if anyone has any to spare. Thanks.