2:30 am

I should backdate this to last night but I was only thinking it then; this is the writing of it. Ah it’s nice when Noah naps long enough to get the daily chores done and mess about in my blog. (Writing? Shhh. Another post.)

Dearest boy,

Your night time schedule has been going nicely set for over two weeks now and I’m getting cocky. The evening is all over the place, but sometime between 8:30 and 9:30 pm you have a final and lengthy nurse and then you pass out into pretty deep sleep, sometimes with some singing and walking or rocking first. Then you and I both go to bed, unless I’m being stupid.

And sometime around 2:30 you wake up hungry and wet. I have tried to follow the parenting book suggestions that we not change you (After All, they say, when you sleep through longer we won’t wake you up to change you), but that produced a rash once. So it goes like this.

I wake up, usually now a few minutes before you or just as you’re grunting. I admit that I wait to see what happens because, after all, one day you may decide to sleep right through. But you keep going and stretch and then your eyes open and you give a louder grunt. I get out of bed and slip on my glasses and then quite often you give me a big smile. When I pick you up, you curl all up against me like newborn, a pose you rarely strike any more during the day, and I usually cuddle you and walk slowly over to the nursery, just feeling you.

The love for you pierces during that short trip down the hallway.

Then, because of the rash, I spread out a receiving blanket on your change table and set you down. Even with the fleece you hate it and sometimes you cry; more often you just make your frowsy faces and grunt. I hate disturbing you that way, but I hate the rash more. I unsnap one of your several sleepers and try to slip the diaper out gently, although I’m often uncoordinated at it. And I warm up the wipe in my hand and clean your baby skin and then do my best with the fresh diaper, although sometimes it seems awfully complicated at that time. By then you’re usually rooting fairly desperately and if I put my hand by your face you curl into it.

Unlike other times of the day you rarely look right at me for this change. So I pick you up quietly and sit in the rocker and get the boppy, so that you can curl up around me, and settle you onto the breast. You’re so good at latching on now that I just direct. And then you settle in for a no-fuss nurse.

About half the nights you fall asleep on the breast and I roll you gently over into the crook of my elbow and wipe your face and nominally burp you and then I look at you and look and look. Someday you will have left your baby face behind, but I will have all these faces burned into my synapses I think; I can remember you the first time we did this and last night almost the same.

The other half of the nights you wake up more. You smile at me while still on the boob and I know I’m supposed to ignore you but I smile back and whisper to you. You then usually finish off and look all around the nursery, especially if I burp you. And then you tend to go into paroxyms of glee: you smile and beam and wriggle. I think I smile a goofy lovestruck smile back and between the two of us, it’s a complete love-in, eyes to eyes, skin to skin.

Unlike the day you don’t get fussy about being held prone like a little baby or for lack of entertainment. As we rock you usually nestle closer, and sometimes smack your lips to go back for more milk. One way or another you drop off to sleep again.

Then when I know you’re really in the deep sleep I walk quietly back and put you down and usually go the bathroom and then I check that you’re breathing and slip back into the bed and snuggle in. And then, because I’m me, I stick my hand out and feel you breathe a little more before I go back to sleep.

Sometime between 5:45 and 6:30 we do it all again, but you are wrigglier and louder and sometimes you don’t go back down. And I tend to feel less reverent – either my brain is lurching ahead to the day, or has the brakes on back in my dream-worlds. We are just as together, but the world around us is a bit bigger by then.

No, it’s 2:30 that’s all ours, Noah-B. And although a little more sleep is always appreciated, I think when you do give up this feed, I’ll miss it quite a lot.