First day on my own with Ingrid. (Eric’s paternity leave ended so he’s back at work.)

Everything went reasonably smoothly, including another trip to the breastfeeding support group, and even a bath for Ingrid.

Knowing that I had no one to hand off Ingrid to if I got tired, made me more focused and patient with her. It also made me pay more attention – or maybe it was just that I was now obliged to notice her behaviour
throughout the whole day.

In any case, I noticed something I should have picked up a lot earlier: I’m feeding her to sleep almost every time. Either she falls asleep during feeding, and we put her to bed. Or when she’s stayed awake for a while after feeding, she hasn’t been able to fall asleep for a long while, and after a while we’ve guessed that maybe it’s because she’s hungry, and then she’s fallen happily asleep. Either way, it’s already difficult to get her to sleep without a feed, so she’s probably already started to associate the two. Not good.

From now on I’ll have to force her awake after feeding, somehow. But she is very good at sleeping when she’s sleepy! I have yet to find a reliable and non-violent way of waking her.