Nights with a Newborn

The passage of time or my selective memory caused me to forget how difficult the first few weeks of newborn-dom are. Right now the bad nights are outweighing the good ones. Our days are great for the most part Jack is adapting to a three-hour cycle of feeding, awake time and sleeping. It's the nights that are killing me. Literally. It's amazing what

lack of sleep and raging, unbalanced hormones

does to your mind. The last two nights have been difficult, made so by bad gas that makes Jack so uncomfortable he can't sleep.

Sophia had the same issues early on. And now that I'm going through it all over again I'm remembering how awful it was to

wake every 45 minutes

to a baby who's in pain and just can't seem to burp or pass gas. I know what the culprit is:

oversupply

of milk and a

forceful let-down

that cause Jack to cough and sputter when he feeds, meaning that he's gulping in loads of air; plus a wee-little digestive system that needs to grow up a bit.

With Sophia the solution was

single-side feelings,

which I didn't figure out until she was six-weeks-old. This time I started off with single-side feedings. They worked well for the first 10 days: Jack was sleeping for four-hour stretches at night and waking to feed two or three times. But the past two nights have been tough: waking 5-6 times a night, fussy with gas each time. Brutal.

At one point last night Jack woke fussing, grunting and pulling his little legs towards his chest. Just as I turned on the light I could hear Sophia crying in the next room: poor girl had a bad dream.

Divide and conquer

is the name of the parenting game at the moment. But it has both my husband and I walking around like zombies,

sleep-deprived and irritable

.

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I know this too shall pass. But man! It sure is the best

birth control

! Last night around 2:41 am I found myself asking

Why?

Why start all over again from square-one when we've navigated the baby stage and now have a fully functional somewhat independent toddler who can articulate her needs, go to the potty by herself and pick up her own toys?

But then I looked at Jack this morning (

a new day always brings a better perspective

) and fell in love with him all over again: his little lips, his tiny nose, his almost-blue-like-mine eyes...there's no one else like him and he's ours. It's hard to ask W

hy?

when your 

looking into the eyes of a miracle

.  Sleep or no sleep.

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How do you deal with sleep deprivation? Have any tips for dealing with a gassy baby?

--Sarah