She’s in the 90th percentile for length and the 50th percentile for weight; that makes for a long, lean baby. And more importantly she’s healthy.
She had a crying jag at the doctor’s office on Friday possibly caused by actually “seeing” the doctor’s facial hair. The last time she saw him was a few days after birth. Though the more likely theory floating around the house is that she was tired since her appointment was right in the middle of her “night-time” (7-8 hours) sleep pattern at 1:30 in the afternoon.
It doesn’t seem strange to us that our daughter would adopt a counter-societal sleep pattern. In California, both hubby and I had some night jobs, on-call jobs, and hardly any 9-5 jobs to speak of, so we were used to strange sleep patterns. Up here in the eastern part of the Pacific Northwest, however, it is difficult to maintain that lifestyle. There are very few 24 hour stores or restaurants. And very little to do after 9 or 10 at night anyway. Basically there is no pay off to staying up all night and sleeping all day.
Of course, our little girl could care less either way, so long as her needs are met. And we’ve been meeting them, of course.
I’ve been reading about different parenting approaches, namely scheduled and on-demand parentling. They sound like what they are: setting a schedule and keeping your baby to it (like waking her up for feedings and so on) or following your baby’s needs for things like feedings and meeting those needs when they are demanded from the child. So far, we’ve been an on-demand household. We’ve had the luxury of not having traditional jobs to pull us away and enforce a schedule. But, now I do have a bit of a schedule to keep and responsibilities outside of the home. So, things are changing somewhat.
I’ve read what people say for and against both parenting approaches and mainly I don’t much care for other opinions. I much rather trust myself and my ability to read my daughter’s needs. So, we will likely end up somewhere in the middle of the two approaches, setting (hopefully) a sleeping schedule for the actual night and letting her show us the way during her day. This may not work out perfectly, but we will see how it goes.
Today, to break up the afternoon, we took a walk in the brisk air. As the temperature was in the low- to mid-thirties, we were bundled up.
