Sleeping Through the Night

Amazing, just as I finished putting the final touches on my last blog and dared to suggest that maybe my daughter would sleep through the night she woke up. The sound of her timid cry filled the airways of my monitor and I got a flutter in my heart because I knew I would get to go hold my baby and comfort her, this however is not always my attitude.

Before my daughter was born I imagined that after 4 or 5 months of not so restful nights my daughter would be sleeping through the night. I can not for the life of me figure out where I would get some silly idea like that! I also falsely assumed that if she was only getting up one or two times a night when she was first born that it would not get any worse than that. Again I found out that I was so wrong.

I remember the first few months home from the hospital I was so excited because she was only getting up once or twice a night and sleeping until 9 am. It was nice to be getting up less times than I had when I was pregnant in. It was also relatively easy to deal with her. I would nurse on one side, she would fall asleep. Then I would change her diaper. nurse on the other side, she would fall asleep, and I would gently put her back in her bassinet on the side of our room. It was a nice pattern and I liked it.

Then one day we decided it was time to move her to her own room. Of course I wasn't ready to leave her and was convinced that somehow she wouldn't sleep as well with out us in the room, so we pulled our mattress onto the floor in her room. However,  we picked one of the coldest days of winter to move her over there. It was 17 below outside and slowly making the way into the house. I was cold and she woke up many times so I assumed she was cold. I eventually let her curl up in bed next to me to keep her warm.

It finally got warmer and she still kept getting up. It became harder to get her back to sleep and I was becoming more and more exhausted. I felt like my brains were leaking out of my ears and there were nights when I would come back to bed and cry because I felt like I was somehow a failure of a parent. I just wanted to be able to put her to bed and get a little sleep. It got to the point where I got up 8 times in a single night. I would have tried anything to help her sleep better.

We finally decided that maybe her room was too temper-mental when it came to the tempurature since we had to set the heat at 75 to get it to be 68 in there, but I noticed that when the heat was going it would get so hot. So, we moved her back to our room. Finally she started to sleep better! I realize that it may have been being with us or that she finally got her first tooth or any number of things, but I was happy to have a sleeping girl.

Since then we have moved and she is back in her room. Her sleeping has maintained a steady rate of waking 0 to 3 times a night and I have come to accept that. I got to the point where I was frustrated because I just knew I was still doing something wrong. "They" say to let her cry, that she should be able to self-soothe, that she shouldn't be eating in the night and that you should keep middle of the contact to as little as possible. Well let me tell you, trying to achieve those things only made it harder.

One day I was finally exhausted and I let her cry at her nap time. It lasted 10 minutes and then I swore to her I would never make her do that again. She cried and cried and cried (and I cried.)  I went in a picked her up and held her close while I nursed her to sleep, this felt so right. During this time I read an article by Dr. Sears about sleep methods and I realized that we were doing many of the things that people suggested. It was at that moment that I finally came to the conclusion that I'm not a bad mom for comforting my child and knowing what works to get her to sleep. I realized that I'm not a bad mom just because my child wakes up at night and that in all likelihood she would not sleep through the night until she was good and ready. (I realize that maybe she would go to bed on her own and possibly sleep through the night if I let my child cry it out and choose to ignore it, but to me that feels so unnatural and I will never do it.)

After I had decided to relax about it I also finally took my husbands offer up for help in the middle of the night. He had always offered to help, but I rarely took him up on it because I felt bad interrupting his sleep when he had to get up and work the next day. It dawned on me that I needed to catch up on just a little sleep, so I told my husband I would let him get up with her in the middle of the night. Do you know what that little stinker, my daughter, decided to do that night? Yup, you guessed it, she slept through the night! The next morning I was so excited. All it took was a little relaxing on my part and things went so much smoother. She has slept through the night a few more times, but not consistently. However, for the most part she only gets up once and it's not until 4. I finally feel like a new woman and I have a clear mind and I am perfectly ok with her waking up in the night.

If you're waiting for the day when you will get a full nights sleep, look no further because I'm convinced it will never happen once you have a child. When she does sleep through the night I still wake. Part of my heart is living outside of my body, how could I not wake, if only for an instant, and want to know that she's ok. But it does get easier if you just relax and accept it. So, tonight, sleep well when you have the opportunity and cherish the moments you are awake.