Recently Tim and I planned to trade night feedings for the 8 week old who is still up 2-3 times a night. Here was our genius, fairly simple plan:
1. Baby goes to sleep.
2. After 4 or so hours, baby wakes up hungry
3. Nissa gets up to feed and change baby and put him back to sleep. Tim sleeps
4. Baby sleeps for 2-3 hours
5. Tim gets up to bottle feed baby, change baby, and put him to sleep. Nissa sleeps
6. Hopefully baby sleeps more. Everyone gets up in the morning happy and refreshed
Great plan, right? Some really great intended outcomes:
A. Baby's needs are met
B. mom and dad each get a much extended stretch of sleep
C.-Z. Did I mention the extra parental sleep?
Alas, as Jack Reacher says, " no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy." Here's how things actually went down those two nights:
Night 1
9:30pm baby goes to sleep. So far so good.
First feeding: Nissa wakes up to find Tim gone. Keys and shoes are gone, and a text confirms a fire call (the good news being that both mama and baby slept through the fire pager going off!). So much for dad taking first feeding. Mama and baby do the feeding, changing, swaddling, back to sleep routine.
Second feeding: Nissa wakes up to find a man in the bed, and screams bloody murder before realizing it's just Tim and she didn't hear him come home. Good thing the baby was already awake or he'd have had quite a rude awakening. Since Tim had been been awake for about 4 hours at this call, he needed to sleep and thus couldn't take the second feeding, either.
Result: Tim loses sleep from a fire call. Nissa still gets up for every feeding. Everyone is scared silly by Nissa screaming. The extra sleep plan was 0% successful.
Night 2
First feeding: Nissa wakes up and feeds baby. Tim sleeps. All is well.
Second feeding: Tim wakes up and prepares a bottle of pumped breastmilk for baby. Feeds 3/4 of bottle to baby. Fire pager goes off. Tim wakes up Nissa to finish feeding baby and leaves for the fire station.
Result: Tim loses sleep from hours at a fire. Nissa still had to get up for every feeding. 2% successful.
Babies and on call jobs: preventing sleep since always. Fortunately, the baby's sleep length is trending upward. This is just a phase. Now the fire pager, not a phase, but unlike babies, it has an off switch.
No more plans for now. We've learned our lesson.
