Hannah is maybe, almost, sorta, kinda, beginning to think about someday having a schedule. That is, her naps only 95% depend on my catering to her, where before they were 100% dependent on my catering to her.

She’s a high-demands baby. She’s eight months old now, and I have two months of my maternity leave left in order to get my book enough started that I will keep writing it when I’m a full-time-working-as-well-as-three-child-mothering type. But until this month, her naps either took 1.5-4 hours of tolerating crying, in order to finally have a 45 minute nap, or that I lie down with her, or that I hold her the whole time.

Not that, you know, it’s so much different this month. It still takes 1.5-4 hours to persuade her to nap, and her naps are still frequently ridiculously short, but now she doesn’t cry hysterically for the whole buildup to nap time. She only cries periodically, and so I can leave the room and do something for five minutes before I have to come in to comfort her and calm her down and tuck her in again. That’s a wild success, uh-HUH!

She still wakes up to be fed at 2am, at 4am, and then at 6 am (when she won’t go back to sleep).

Yesterday, I took her to Ian’s workplace to have lunch with him. And on our way out, we were talking with one of his coworkers, who cooed over Hannah and opined that she would like to have five or seven babies, if she could only do something with them as they got older. And I looked at her like she was crazy. Frickin’ really? I mean, babies are cute and all, but I like them older so much. And I said something about the lack of sleep.

Laughing Maniacally at the Thought of Actually Napping

She has one, and she said, “oh, but you get used to that.”

And I said, “I thought that when I had had one. And I thought it with Rachel too, because, when Rachel was born, I hadn’t slept much in the last three years anyway. But then, Rachel got to be five, and Ethan was eight, and I had just got my sleep back. They knew to let us sleep in on the weekend. When I had a day off, I could actually take a day off. Now I’m right back where I was six years ago.”

So then, last night, I dreamt I was pregnant. And it kept slipping my mind, but then I’d have to go in for a prenatal appointment, carrying Hannah perched on top of my belly, like I used to have to carry Ethan. And in the dream, Ian and I were trying to move again, and I was feeling useless about not being able to pack anything up or get anything cleaned or fixed up because I was so exhausted, and even if I wasn’t exhausted, I had Hannah expecting to be carried around and nursed to sleep constantly. And then I was standing in the yard, with my family, looking at a bunch of things that still needed doing for the move, and feeling miserable because I couldn’t set down Hannah or the unborn baby to just get away and get anything done. And I was complaining in that slightly hysterical tone about how I just didn’t want a fourth baby. My mum and Judith were talking soothingly like they do about how they could come by and hold Hannah for a bit, or take the other two kids for an afternoon. While Alison and Meredith, kept smiling overenthusiastically and telling me what a great idea another baby is.

It was such a vivid dream. Including even the sensation of having the baby do that fishy, flopping roll that makes your whole belly change shape.