Decisions Decisions

Emrys and I have both taken the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicators on a number of occasions for various professional development activities.  One of the perspectives of this particular indicator is how you gather information and make decisions.  I am one who weighs all the options, researches options upside down and inside out and generally over think things before I make a decision.  Emrys will just make a decision on the fly and go with it.  

For instance - if we're down in town and it's heading towards mealtime, Emrys's response to getting hungry and toward mealtime is "let's grab dinner".  In my head, it's getting towards mealtime and starting to get hungry and my process looks more like this: "How many more errands do we have?  Can I last until we get home where I know there is food in the fridge?  Did I bring any snacks with us to hold us over? Do we have room in the budget to eat out?  Yes.  Fast food or sit down?  What am I hungry for?..." and it goes on and on, all before I even mention aloud the possibility of going out.  

So now we come to other decisions.  Like when we want to introduce a bottle to Gwendolyn so that I can get a snippet of rest from feedings.  Friday night, as part of my processing, we pulled out the bottles we had gotten as baby-shower gifts (thanks again everyone!) and experimented to see which nipples had the slower flow rates that would be less likely to confuse Gwendolyn if we introduced the bottle and were switching between bottle and nursing.  (Granted we'd already given her a pacifier which has caused no problems or confusion.)  Then I wasn't sure when we should introduce the bottle, wait until she was 3 weeks old? older? sooner?   And I was trying to process all of this in a mostly exhausted state.  

So, at about 9pm it seemed that Gwendolyn was going to bed, so I promptly crawled into bed too.  (Sleep when baby sleeps, right?)  But she was just kidding.  So with one arm draped over the side of the bed to her bassinet I was holding the pacifier in place and stroking her cheek hoping she would go to sleep only to realize with each of her fusses, that I'd fallen asleep in between.  So Emrys took her downstairs, and I passed out.  

Next thing I knew it was 4am.  Gwendolyn was fussing, I'd been sleeping for close to 7 hours.  What on earth!  So I got up, changed a diaper and fed her and we all went back to bed.  I was amazed that she'd slept so long.  Saturday morning I was talking with Emrys amazed at this and asked what time she's finally gone to sleep and he said about 10:30.  For a moment I felt bad that he'd been up with her for so long after I went to sleep, but it didn't last long as I had relished every minute of that sleep and felt like a new person!  I mentioned that I was amazed that she had slept that long between feedings.  

"Oh yeah, she was hungry, I fed her the two ounces of milk that were in the fridge, then she went to sleep."

So Gwendolyn was introduced to the bottle, I got some much needed extra sleep and dad's decision making skills are saving me from continued research and over analysis on when the best time to introduce a bottle will be.  Best of all - dad can start taking the middle of the night feedings too!