Growth Spurts Make Everyone Cranky

It's easy to get smug. Your baby is bigger and starts sleeping longer between feedings. Maybe you only get up twice a night, a generous four hours apart. There's the occasional five hour sleep. You wake up heart thumping, convinced your precious little alarm clock has choked to death in his sleep, but after affirming that he is still breathing, you are unutterably grateful for that uninterrupted time with the backs of your eyelids. And maybe, just maybe, there's no more poopy diapers at night, allowing a thoroughly lazy mom to forego a moonlight diaper change. If the baby doesn't get diaper rash, you start to feel invincible.

And then it strikes. The GROWTH SPURT. Suddenly, it's all gone. Forget four hours. Forget three. You feel victorious if it is a full two hours between feedings. Your good natured child is replaced by a ravenous beast who wakes from every nap convinced that the gnawing emptiness in his belly has never been filled and that if he does not make his demands known to the next zip code, no one will feed him this time either. And does he reward you with a sappy milk-drunk smile for stumbling bleary-eyed out of bed for the fifth time that night? No, ma'am. Growing is tiring, after all, and he can hardly be bothered to come fully awake to eat. You wish the same were true for you, but someone has to keep his head from falling off, the way it lolls forward on his tiny neck when you sit him up to burp him. After 24 hours of every 2 hour feedings, you no longer need the baby alarm clock. Your engorged chest will tell you when it is time for someone to eat, confirming that he has, indeed, done his job. ("I must, I must, I must increase supply".) The final bonus is undoubtedly the increase in excrement. After all, what goes in, must come out. Often all over the PJ's. Only his if you are lucky. Nursing moms, take heed. Make sure there are lots of clean clothes when the growth spurt strikes.

The upside? All those extra calories he needs come from mom. An excellent excuse to eat more. Or eat the same and watch the baby fat melt away. Or eat next to nothing at all because who has the time to make food?

And besides, on the other side of this painful 48-72 hours is a bigger, even more huggable baby.