Anatomy of Sleep

Like I said in a previous post, G sleeps 11-12+ hours at night now. What exactly does that mean? Just like adults, babies (and kids) have sleep cycles. For babies, their sleep cycles are 30 minutes long and get longer as they get older. Anyways, I thought I'd detail out how G sleeps (and how she spins).

Last night we put her to bed at 11:20pm (yes it's late, we are still working on shifting it earlier, I started feeding her at 10). She complained a bit, had one loud cry, then fell asleep by 11:30pm. All's good. Sometimes she is so sleepy she doesn't complain at all when we put her to bed and goes right back to sleep, I think the longest it took her to go to sleep was maybe 45 minutes, but it was mostly talking and complaining, no crying. If we put her down too early like we tried to the other day, she just complains and cries, and we (the royal we, which is actually just me) eventually (I think it was over an hour) had to just feed her again.

Around 12:30, we heard her cry. It was actually crying, mixed with loud complaining. We listened to her from the family room and waited (listening mostly to see if her crying would get louder or softer). E timed it - 8 minutes later, she was back asleep.

This morning around maybe 6 or 7, I heard G cry again. I have no idea how long it lasted, it wasn't loud enough or long enough for E to wake up. I laid in bed listening to her, to see if I needed to get up. Eventually she fell back asleep, and so did I.

When E left for work this morning around 9:30 (late for him), he checked in on her, she was partially awake, rubbing her hair. She cried for a few minutes, then I just heard her talking to herself (and maybe to the animal friends she has on her crib bumper), heard her sneeze a few times, she got the hiccups, and eventually went back to sleep again.

She doesn't always cry so many times during the night, in fact, last night was more on the unusual side. My guess would be that she might half-wake up 1-2 times. But E & I continue to agree that we are very lucky when it comes to G's sleep.

Here are some pictures of how she spins herself around:

G's starting position (actually, before I got the camera, her feet were pointing towards the giraffe)

Leg lift & Ab crunch #1

Back arch #1, check position

Leg lift & Ab crunch #2

Back arch #2, look around

Insert fingers and go back to sleep