Guess who's been asleep for 3 hours? DH put me to bed with lots of fruit and liquid in easy reach, settled M and tucked her in next to me once she was asleep and went back to work. He's just phoned to check on me and we've been asleep ever since. M is still asleep now. Jacket potatoes are in the oven, beans, tuna and cheese on standby, just hoping she stays asleep until it's ready.
TYG I will readily admit that I probaby do misread her cries at times but try and cover every eventuality before I offer her food. She does seem to follow the same pattern when hungry- starts by putting out her tongue and turning her head from side to side, turns into proper rooting, she then starts to grizzle, making a grumbly sound in her throat which escalates into the mad, insistent waah waah waah which I know is hunger. The other way of knowing is to lie her on my belly and if she's hungry she finds the nipple herself, if not she calms instantly. Usually she's hungry though. I have tried and tried to lengthen the time between feeds but to no avail. She has never gone more than 2hrs in the day and it's usually nearer an hour even on a very good day. I can jig her, soothe her, sing to her, bath her, push her in the pram, leave her alone, put her in her bouncy chair, give her to DH etc and it won't work, she gets angry and tired and then can't feed properly through exhaustion. She feeds for at least 20 minutes at each feed even if she only waits half an hour for it, is definitely getting hind milk and has lots of very bright yellow explosive nappies- probably 7 full dirty nappies a day and another 10 very wet ones on top of this. I talked to another mother at the clinic yesterday about how often she feeds and she said her 4.5 month old has only just started going 3hrs between feeds and is a very hungry bf baby. She described her behaviour and she could have been talking about M. Her solution to the tedious, ongoing, exhausting problem? Sky! MIL had four babies who were exactly the same and ended up with two rugby players, a professional ballet dancer and a triathlete. All of them eat enormous amounts and are extremely fit and active. Me, I'm more your sloth of a human, hung from a tree, idly scratching, reading a good book and wondering where my next gingerbread fix is coming from. This uncontrollable appetite is a very foreign concept. She even gets hungry in her sleep and wriggles over the bed to me, rooting away and latches on in her sleep. DH changes jobs mid-July so just have to get through the next few weeks.
I've started watching the most rubbish Two Pints of Redcoats and Jeremy Meets Trisha nonsense in the night just to while away the hours (can't focus on a book). It all melts into one and is all rubbish but have so far managed to avoid watching one second of Big Brother. When that happens I know I've reached rock bottom. I also sit for a long time in the wee small hours noting spelling errors on BBC News 24 with such glee. I even watched a 3am repeat of Countdown.
Got to go as oven just dinged. Mrs JB I still have coccyx trouble and am still sleeping on the floor instead of the bed. At least M can't roll off the floor I suppose. Still have mild carpal tunnel too.
Off to snaffle potatoes...