Sunday, April 17, 2011

No, my child STILL does not "sleep through the night".

How many times have I been asked if my baby sleeps through the night? If I had a penny for every time it has been asked I would be rich!  Yesterday, while my husband and I were enjoying a nice breakfast out with our baby girl a man beside us asked "So have you lost a lot of sleep?" after several other questions and comments about how cute the little booger is. ;-) I just started laughing, like seriously? More than you will ever know buddy.  If anyone ever told me one of the hardest things about having a baby (for me at least) is the battle to go to sleep and how difficult it has been I would have never believed them. 

The first month of Lexie's life I thought hey this isn't hard this is a breeze! WELL, except for the difficulties of breastfeeding which is a whole other can of worms to open up.  When her 2nd and 3rd month hit, those were some of the most difficult times ever.  About the same time every night around 8pm Lexie would fight sleep like a champ to the point where she was screaming and crying for hours on end.  My husband and I would take turns trying to calm her and sooth her any way we could with no success.  When we finally would get her to sleep she slept pretty good for about 6 or 7 hours straight.  Now who's to say if we were doing something wrong with her sleep habits or if she had "colic" which is what we thought but either way I reeeealllly hope we don't have to go through it again with our next one.  But if we do, I will be more prepared.  We were totally against letting her cry to sleep, which to this day I don't do the whole cry for 2 hours because you are going to sleep whether you like it or not, I just don't have it in me.  Finally one friday when she was about 3 months old I said I can't do this anymore! I can't rock her to sleep for 45 minutes for her to only sleep for 30!  So I bit the bullet and laid her in her pack-n-play (no we had not transitioned to the crib yet) and let her cry.  I counted down each minute, and right at about 10 minutes it was quiet.  My eyes lit up and I was like OH EM GEE it worked!!!  In about a week's time I finally was able to get her to nap sufficiently and go to sleep at night and she moved right into her crib with pretty much no problem. 

Even after this, she still woke up every 3 or 4 hours to nurse.  I kept hoping for the day she would just start sleeping through the night.  At her 4 month check up the doctor said once she starts eating solids that she would.  So there was hope.  Andddddd nope, still didn't work.  At her 6 month check up, the doctor said well now that she is eating more solids she should start to.  So there was hope.  Andddd yet again, nope! right around this time, things got worse.  Her bedtime is usually between 7:30 and 8:30 and she started her nightly wake up at 11.  The 11 o clock doom tormented me every night.  I spent nights on her floor sleeping.  I spent nights laying outside her room praying she would go back to sleep if I let her cry a few minutes.  This went on for at least a month, and my days were filled with grumpiness and stress.  Finally I decided I was going to not go to her every time she woke up and hoped that she wouldn't go past my 15 minute limit of letting her cry.  Thankfully every time she woke up she would only cry for about 10 minutes and go back to sleep. WHEEW! After a few nights of this the 11 o clock doom was finally over. 

Now, to this day (she is almost 10 months old) there is usually a time in the middle of the night that she will wake up and if she just gets some milk she will go back to sleep fine.  For a while when I would get up in the middle of the night I would ask "WHY ME?" "Why can't my child sleep through the night?"  When I hear my friends or family talking about how their 2 or 3 month old is sleeping through the night it almost made me cringe.  Then I realized, if the only thing I have to worry about with my baby is that she still wakes up in the middle of the night then I have nothing to complain about! She is my special, fight till the end little girl and I love every little thing about her.  So, no my child still doesn't totally sleep through the night but that is okay because she is happy and healthy and that is all that matters. 

1 comment:

  1. Allison you are not alone.....Ryan still doesn't sleep thru the night and he is going on nine months....he will wake up at least once every night and make some kind of sound. Sometimes he is asleep trying to find his pacy and sometimes he is wide awake...me and my husband had to make ourselves not go in there and check on him everytime he made a sound...it is soo hard to do! Now the only time we will go in there is if he starts crying! But I totally agree with you if all we have to complain about with our babies is that they don't sleep thru the night we are very lucky parents!

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