Snapshot

Have you ever had a male coworker walk into your office while you are pumping breastmilk? 

Halle and Anneka, oh dear, Halle and Anneka.  I think you are doing fine.  I'm sure it will get tough but we are off to a good start.  It will be nice when Paul-Daddy is home.

I return home at 7:20pm after being away for 6 hours doing some pre-term prep and teaching my first class.  I look quietly through the front window to see G and the girls sitting together on the couching reading and talking.  Anneka is engaged, Halle is trying to climb over the side of the couch to get to the book shelf.  I can hear her shrieking her excited shriek.

I open the door and Halle goes nuts giggling and squealing and dragging G who is holding her hands in my direction.  She is all over me and can't get to the boob fast enough.  Anneka is talking but is busy at the coffee table and doesn't look up.  Halle is being too noisy for me to hear everything Anneka is saying, but I catch "Did you miss me, Mum?"

"I missed you so much, did you miss me?"

- "Yes."

"You missed me so much that you can't even be bothered to look up when I get home?"

She looks up and smiles her wicked smile.  They are both in great spirits and although they are bathed, in PJ's and have been fed dinner, I can't get them to sleep until 8:30.  Halle is full of beans, but is so obedient about going to sleep she lies down in the playpen beside our bed anyway.  Anneka wants a snack. 

"Where would you like to sleep?"

"In your bed."

"Oh, OK."

When I take Anneka in Halle stands up.  I tuck Anneka in and lie Halle back down.  "Don't talk to Halle"  I tell Anneka.  She doesn't and I walk out.

Anneka falls asleep SO quickly in our big comfy bed (even through Halle's attempts to get her attention) but Halle stands up and starts crying for her and me.  I leave, go and eat and tidy up a bit in the kitchen (it's mostly been tidied).  Halle cries for a bit before she lies herself back down.  It doesn't bother me.  She's there with Anneka, knows how to put herself to sleep, is in her familiar environment and I need to eat.

This is how we sleep when Paul's gone.  We have a King sized bed and Anneka has taken to crawling into our bed in the middle of the night anyway.  It may seem a regression.  Anneka slept all night with no disturbances from 13months to 2 years 4 months in her own bed (and from 18 months without a pull up).  One month before Halle was born, she started staking her territory. 

Sleeping with and nursing Anneka during the night, although she was generally a fairly good sleeper, was harder for me the first time.  I wanted her beside me, but I did not always fall back to sleep so easily, sometimes I would lie awake thinking.  Although there would be periods of time when I would barely wake up, I would be deceiving myself by saying it was always so lovely sleeping together.  I think this first time around, there would have been no perfect solution.  It was just my adjustment to motherhood and my adjustment to sleep interruption and sleep deprevation, and some anxiety that these things manufactured.  With Anneka next to me, was how I coped the best, but she certainly did not suffer from sleeping alone, she began getting really solid sleeps.  In retrospect I would probably do things with Anneka the same way, I would just think about it less!

With Halle, you couldn't keep me awake.  If neither she nor Anneka bug me all night long which does happen every once in a while, I sleep all night, uninterrupted.  To wake up a 7 and realize it is your first wake-up is positively blissful.  Even with the 1 - 3 night feedings Halle usually demands, I feel pretty good these days, as long as I put myself to bed early.  I am actually lucky in that I have only experience low-grade sleep deprivation from time to time, this time around.  I am lucky in that both my babies have been pretty good about sleeping a stretch of a decent length of time, (yes, there have been rough patches) and I am never awake thinking this second time around.  It doesn't really bother me where any of us sleep as long as we sleep, and I seem to be able to sleep the sleep of a non-parent.

Halle started sleeping on her own accord in her own playpen bed since seven months.  She stopped falling asleep at the breast, started sucking her blanket and I found she went back to sleep more quickly in her own bed.  Unlike with Anneka, I've never felt any unease, either, about her sleeping separately.  Until, I clear out some of Anneka's toys there is no option for Halle to move into Anneka's room either.  So here we are in 2011, all in Mama's bed!  I LOVE IT....but I don't think Paul will.

I justify this easiest option, but saying, "Hey look, Halle and Anneka have gotten used to going to bed at the same time in the same room!"  It's true.  They have, they do.  They are sisters, going to bed together and sleeping together. 

One day they will be sisters sleeping together in their own bedroom!!

How did this post turn out about sleep?  All this said, and since I'm on sleep, I wonder when I'll night wean Halle.  I just start thinking I might tackle it, when she goes and sleeps all night on her own, then I start hoping maybe she'll be a baby that does it on her own. I wouldn't put it past Halle.  We can always hope!