I Got Stuff Done This Morning. Why?

R wakes up to eat around 6:30 every morning. Senpai has to be up at that time anyway to get ready for work, so he takes care of feeding her, changing her diaper, and getting her to fall back asleep. I have to wake up, too, but my only responsibility that early in the morning is to get my butt out of bed and go downstairs to pump breast milk. Sometimes (most times) I require more than one prod from Senpai to get me up. Once I'm done pumping I can slide back into bed to fulfill my daily sleep requirements and not be a zombie, until R wakes up again and then we're both up for the day.

Except it hasn't been that easy this past week. She'd been fussy as Senpai put her back in bed, and she hadn't been able to fall back to sleep for more than an hour. So for me, instead of sliding back under the covers and slowly drifting back to sleep, I'd hear fitful noises on the baby monitor, get up to soothe her, get back into bed only to have to get up again 10 minutes later, repeat, repeat, repeat for an hour. It was frustrating to me because yes, I could still get back in bed, but I like to stay there! Up and down, up and down, under the covers, never falling back to sleep was such a tease. Today I was done with it. I decided to just stay up and get morning stuff taken care of until she woke up. I ate breakfast, took a shower, assembled an outfit from some new clothes I had bought, washed dishes, moved laundry over... hey, why isn't she awake yet?

I think what had been happening this week is that last Friday we increased her milk dosage to 7 oz every 4 hours. She had been on 5 oz every 3 (really 2 1/2) hours, but Friday morning she was RAVENOUSLY hungry and finished 9 oz on the spot. Then she wasn't hungry again until 3 1/2 hours later. I was thrilled! I could finally get her on a 4 hour schedule! In my enthusiasm to get her to last for such a longer time, I thought 7 oz might be a good amount of milk. Turns out it was TOO much, as she started spitting up after every feeding (she usually doesn't). There was a lot of spit up. On Wednesday I cut her daytime feedings back to 6 oz thereby eliminating the spit up, but I still had Senpai feed her 7 oz in the morning because I wanted to make sure she had a full tummy to fall asleep with. The fussy mornings continued. Today we got our acts together and Senpai fed her 6 oz. Heh heh, yeah. Guess who was out like a light and stayed out until 9:40?

I wish I had gone back to bed.