Sleepless no more

The reproduction of mankind is a great marvel and mystery. Had God consulted me in the matter, I should have advised him to continue the generation of the species by fashioning them out of clay.
Martin Luther



Babies do not sleep. That is the main conclusion I have come to since becoming a dad. I mean they sleep but they sleep when they want to no matter how it affects anyone else. Our daughter wakes up every 2 and a half to three hours to eat. This schedule makes sleep, at least when my wife and I want to sleep, nearly impossible. So when Samantha slept from 11pm to 4:30am last night it was with great relief, enthusiasm and excitement. That was the longest stretch my wife has been without a baby since conception and it was certainly nice for her.
Since we started this journey into parenthood we have been faced with a few challenges, a few successes, a few things we don't plan on doing ever again and a fair amount of lessons learned. From what we have seen, read and been told there is no certain way to get babies to sleep when the adults want them too. Babies have their own clocks and they obey those clocks without care if it's night or day or you're in Church or at the doctor's office or in the supermarket. Before we had our daughter I never grasped why women would breast feed in a public place, it seemed they should try to find a private locale and then feed at will. As I just said above, babies clocks don't allow for the delay in getting something to eat just as they don't allow for too many adjustments to their sleep schedule.
In one of the parenting books we read it stated quite clearly that one of the worst things you can do is to try to force a baby onto a rigid sleep schedule. Never wake up a sleeping baby or you'll get an overtired baby who won't be able to sleep and will be very cranky on top of it all! Not a scenario that my wife or I are in any rush to have happen in our home. Believe it or don't believe it, it was scary enough for me to pay close attention to.
This too shall pass is the mantra that most experienced parents seem to live by. As you have read in previous posts, sometimes I try to rush through the days to reach the next milestone. I am doing my best not to rush and I am not hoping that anything passes too quickly. I think I will take a different mantra, everything happens for a reason and will move along at its own pace.