I never thought "sleep" would be such an issue in my house. I've slept 10-12 hours a night since high school! I'm not a morning person, nor am I a "night owl". I like to sleep when everyone else is being productive. I guess this is payback for my years of lazyness. I haven't slept through the night in over a year. There have been some close calls...like the few times when Lucy slept 7 hours straight. Those times I had the curse of getting up early for work, or waking up every hour because it was so STRANGE that Lucy was sleeping. (I'd even pry my eyes open to try and count her breathing on the fuzzy video moniter.) Then of course the nights that I could sleep for 16 hours straight, Lucy decides to be on the "every hour" plan. Last night I could have sworn I had a newborn in the house. She finally fell asleep at 10. We got ourselves to bed at 11. She started at 1:00, then every hour till 4. Then up from 4-5 crawling around our bed, attempting to fall asleep. Then 30 min in her bed screaming like a crazy person. Then another 30-45 min of holding, shushing, rocking. Then only "moments" after we'd fallen asleep together on the futon, it was 7:15 and the garbage truck woke us up. We crawled back in my bed, hoping Tim would have pity on us, and do something! (To his credit, he did help the first few times by bringing her to me, but he had to work, so I took night duty.) Luckily we both fell asleep for another hour. And then, by some strange jekyll/hyde conversion, she instantly became the smiley happy, "well-rested" appearing baby we love at 8:30 in the morning! It's enough to kill her mother.
I really thought that you just feed and burp and change a baby, they get tired, you rock them to sleep, they lie down, they stay asleep till they are hungry again. Then as they get older, they enjoy sleeping, and will naturally go get IN their crib, and ask not to be bothered till at least 9:00am. Lucy never followed that plan. We continue to "work it out"...sometimes letting her scream till someone breaks (it's usually me....maybe 30% of the time she falls asleep from wailing). Sometimes helping her with more milk, rocking, daddy time or even the (gasp)"illegal" co-sleeping!! Just when we think we've turned a corner (like 2 days in a row of sleeping "thru" the night, or better yet, waking up and putting herself back to sleep!!), we turn another one, and "oh my gravy...it's a dead end!"
The even sadder thing about it, is I find a sick comfort to hear that my friends kids aren't perfect in this arena either. When I heard that Rachel had gone back to waking 3-4 times a night, after many months of 1-2 times a night....my heart skipped a beat. EVIL! I think, to be fair, it's that I think Chrisse is a great mom, so it must not be something SHE is doing wrong. And so I take comfort, knowing that I'm not the only sleep deprived mom with a very happy child.
3 days old-it looks so easy, doesn't it??
3 days old-it looks so easy, doesn't it?? 
You know, I think every new parent has fears of the part they think will be hard (for me it was sleep and labor, until i needed a cs), and then what ACTUALLY turns out to be hard is unexpected (breast feeding? I thought if I just worked hard it would be no prob. Ha!). I also think every family has at least one area that's just plain hard. So some families have great sleepers but lots of trouble with eating (that's been us!), some families have trouble with sleeping but no trouble with eating (you!). Somehow the grass always looks greener at someone else's house. But you're doing a great job!
ReplyDeleteYou'll get there, you'll just keep working it out until it works. Don't stop believing!
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