> Humans are highly social animals. I'm amazed and sad it's common practice to isolate babies for such a large portion of the day.
It's fun to watch my 1 year old son roll around in his sleep and check to see if mom is there and then roll around around or do an arm swing and feel if I am there all without waking up too much. At first it seemed random and then I noticed the pattern. He was checking if we are still there, it's like a background task running in "low power mode", probably baked in by evolution a long long time ago.
My wife and I did that, sandwiching our little guy between us, but we put a down comforter over ourselves so his fat little arms would go flumpf in the down as he verified our presence. That allowed us to replace ourselves with big pillows after he fell asleep. He would whack those comforter-covered pillows flumpf, flumpf to make sure we were still there, and we'd be downstairs watching a movie!
My 2 year old does this too every night, uses his arms and legs to feel us. And if it gets a bit cold, tries to cozy up into one of us - feels super awesome.
In the morning, he remains asleep till at least one of us is in bed, as soon as we both are out of the bed, he wakes up.
When he finds you does he squeeze you a bit? That's my son's thing. Waves the arm, makes contact, squeezes and pinches for a while... Then back to sleep. It's nice.
It's fun to watch my 1 year old son roll around in his sleep and check to see if mom is there and then roll around around or do an arm swing and feel if I am there all without waking up too much. At first it seemed random and then I noticed the pattern. He was checking if we are still there, it's like a background task running in "low power mode", probably baked in by evolution a long long time ago.