Sleep... and motherhood

First off, I have to say that I'm glad The Simpsons have changed up their opening credits. It's about time!

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about sleep lately. We're actually getting some, so that's nice, but it would be nice to get more. However, I read an article by a sleep expert about sleep expectations (especially about how many hours a day infants actually need) and it has dashed any hopes that we'll be getting our lazy Sunday mornings back. Not that I was really expecting to get them back anyway, it was just wishful thinking.

According to the sleep guru, babies Penelope's age need (this is, of course, on average) 13 hours of sleep a day. Generally this means 8 1/2 at night and 4 1/2 during the day, which is broken out between 3-4 daily naps. Penny doesn't quite fit this model, but she's pretty close. We get 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep from about 8pm to 3-4am and then she'll sleep until 7 or 8am. Technically this second stretch could be called a nap.

Nap #2 is usually around 10:30 and lasts an half an or so. So that's about 11 1/2 for the day so far. An afternoon nap around 1pm can be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, and a late nap around 5pm usually only lasts a half an hour to 45 minutes. Then we're back to bedtime. So all in all, she gets between 12 & 14 hours of sleep a day. Pretty good!

Now, if we could condense her naps into 2 longer stretches of sleep I would be ecstatic. This would help once I start Grad school next month and need time to read/study/do homework. If we can't make that work then I'll have to be creative with study time...

I did want to end this post with some thoughts about motherhood, but I'm going to take advantage of Penelope's sleep & Bryan being out of the house for softball and watch some of my especially girly TV shows that I've DVR'd.