December 17, 2009
Dear Nicholas,
The day you were born was a bright, warm fall day. November 17, 2009 was undoubtedly the best day in my life. Your birth was so amazing. The 25 hours before that were not so amazing, but as soon as they put you on my chest all purple and wrinkled and crying I knew it was all worth it. I never dared to dream that you would be so perfect. You are a beautiful baby.
For the first few weeks, you rarely cried. You would tell us you were hungry by snorting and snuffing on our shoulder to see if you could root out some food, or by just starting to chew on any arms or fingers within reach. You are just so happy to be curled up snuggling anyone who is willing – and let me tell you, there are a lot of people lining up to snuggle you at all hours of the day. Between Grandma Arlene, Far Far Roger, Grandma Car-Car, Granddad, Aunt Michelle, Uncle John, Uncle Andrew and all of our family friends, you spent a significant portion of your first month being snuggled. And you haven’t even met all of your other relatives yet.
You’re still figuring out the difference between night and day. For now, you still spend most of your day asleep. You spend a good chunk of the night asleep too, but it seems that you think it’s just as good to be awake in the night as it is during the day. Your favorite time to be awake is 8pm to midnight. Now, I need a lot of sleep, and this night time wakefulness has been pretty hard on me, but your daddy is almost eager for you to have a hard time falling asleep at night because then he gets “Daddy Chest Time”. I think this is his favorite part of the day. He takes you out to the couch and snuggles you up on his chest and you both fall asleep until you get hungry again. It is the sweetest thing.
When you do manage to fall asleep at night, you are a NOISY sleeper. You spend most of the night grunting and groaning, whether you are awake or asleep. You start awake and beg for us to give you your pacifier again. You make happy little munching noises while you suck on your pacifier. More than once we’ve pulled you into our bed (against all the advice in the books), so that we can constantly soothe you and hopefully get a bit more sleep. This week, we finally decided that none of us were getting enough sleep under the status quo, so we moved you into your crib at night. Although you seem so far away in your own room, we are all now sleeping much better. You’ve given us a few stretches of 5-6 hours of sleep and even one 8 hour stretch, which we love you for.
This month has been a big adjustment for all of us, but your dad and I couldn’t be happier. We’re so glad you’re part of our life!
Love,
Mommy