Praise the Lord! PJ slept from 9pm until 3am last night. I went to bed at 11pm, so I got 4 contiguous hours of sleep. He had a hard time getting to sleep last night. Tried him in my little clamshell thing, almost asleep, but then woke up fussy; tried him in the swing, ditto; on the floor, ditto; nursing, ditto; in the crib upstairs with the mobile going, ditto! Now when I say fussy, I don’t mean screaming to make your head rattle fussy. He just grunts and makes little worried sounds, flails his arms and legs a bit, and most importantly, does not fall asleep. Usually I let him try for about 10 minutes or so before I change tactics. I had probably left him in the crib 20 minutes because it was sort of my last resort. Finally, just took him downstairs and put him in his buzz chair in the kitchen while I made (a very late) dinner. Hamburgers and chips. I showed PJ what I was doing at every step and let him smell the garlic and feel the cold tomatoes on his cheeks. He seemed to think that was pretty fun. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t tired – he didn’t nap well that day and he had gotten up early with gas as usual.

Mom called and suggested giving him a bath.

Now, when he’s tired, he typically doesn’t like a bath. I usually try to give him a bath at the top of his energy curve. That’s when I can convince him it’s fun. I talk to him the whole time telling him how nice it is, like a spa, how it feels so good. Anyway, Mom suggested I take the bath with him. It was certainly worth a try at this point.

So we took a bath. You’d think a three month old, 15 lb squirmy baby would be tough to handle in the tub, with both of you wet. But it didn’t get that way until I decided to suds up his little body. That was tricky. He was starting to get sleepy (those tell-tale droopy lids) and I let him nurse a little bit. Then I decided we better get the show on the road here, dry us off, nurse him and put him down! So we got out and I nursed him – he fell asleep in about 5 minutes. And he was floppy. No tip-toeing necessary. I put him on a pillow in his crib in Josh’s office so it would be easy to move him to the co-sleeper in our room when we went to bed. I banged his leg on the side of the crib on the way there. No matter. Zzzzzzzzzzz. Thank God! He stayed asleep when we moved him later at 11pm, too. Normally, he doesn’t make it through that transition and we are nursing every 3 hours from there on. Like I said, he didn’t wake me up until 3am!

At 3am, I decided not to change his diaper and just nurse him while he was still slumbery. He didn’t nurse long and was back to floppy. He woke again at 5am, so I didn’t change his diaper again and nursed laying down this time. He was a little grunty, but went back to a sound sleep after about 15 minutes. Woke again at 7am with the grunts, these lasted a lot longer, but were mild enough to where I didn’t feel like I needed to put him in the buzz chair or get up. I did change that diaper though. And it wasn’t as wet as I expected, probably because he was sleeping more soundly. We mostly slept until 8am.

Perhaps he’s just hitting his stride here digestionally, but I think we might have a little bathy again tonite…