Sleep - a log

Day sleeper - 10 months

  

I thought I might keep a bit of a log as to your sleeping habits. Being a first time mama, I thought everything you did, including all those nights trying to get you to sleep, would be etched on my mind forever but it appears lack of sleep makes your brain malfunction and causes memory loss. I've realised now the importance of noting things down as well as having the initiative to do so.

 And so to sleep.  This month, at 16 months, we can pretty much rely on you to sleep through the night. Ah, the serenity.  If you do wake up, it is usually when we are going to bed.  Love our floorboards but they do amplify every sound in our little house. Sometimes you wake up in the night but a quick drink of water and you are right to go back to sleep. Last night, you were standing up and I gave you a drink and then you lay/ fell down on to your face and started snoring immediately. I had to stop myself from laughing in case I woke you up.  Your sleep habits are weird. You easily wake up when we go to bed but when the neighbour uses a chainsaw RIGHT next to your window during the day, you don't wake up at all. We had a massive storm recently and it was loud and you didn't wake up during that either. A floorboard creaks and you call out to us immediately.

 At the beginning of  your 16th month, we went on a little Winter holiday and your beautiful daddy gave me a real holiday by getting up to you at night. The first couple of nights, I still woke up if you made a noise but then I started to really relax and just sleep through. What a gift! It really takes at least two people to raise a baby. Women who do it by themselves either by choice or circumstance - I salute you.

 Being in a new place on holiday, you would wake up and need a bit of help re-settling. I knew this would happen however we've traveled before and the memories of the good times outweigh the sleep issues... just. I know with time we will remember more meeting your new cousin and lovely memories of you tickling our feet to wake us in the morning and less of the ever increasing waking at night and the stress of trying to keep you quiet and not wake everyone up in the apartment complex.

This holiday, you were in the room next to us and your dad would give you a bit of a cuddle, a drink of water, lie you down and stroke your hair until you relaxed enough to re-settle yourself or fall asleep. Of course, this is everything that the books told us not to do but you seem to really respond to this at the moment. We have been weaning you and when I have been getting up to you, all you have wanted is boob and have been really hard to settled. If your dad gets up to you, you are easily settled. Win, win.

Since being home, you have slept through every night. I think I have such a sleep deficit it is going to take some time to catch up on sleep. I am grateful that you are sleeping through but have yet to feel the full effects of good nights sleep as yet. 

You wake most mornings at 7am or whenever we get up. We better have a banana ready pretty quickly for you. We often hear you calling out for "Mama, Daddy" or for the dog. You are down to one day sleep, even though I can see you could do with two naps. No matter how matter what I try, you are not into having another nap.   Around 10.45 - 11am, I pop you in your cot and most mornings you will go to sleep without any protest, although sometimes I can hear you babbling for up to an hour. Usually you sleep for about 1hr 45 mins at the moment but occasionally you do some marathon sleeps of 3 -4 hours for no rhyme or reason. 

You are still not a co-sleeping baby. Even as an infant, you did not like being breastfed laying down and would only lie down next to me for the duration of the feed in the morning. We used to be able to bring you into our bed in the mornings and have a bit of a feed and a play but now you when you get out of your cot, you want to be up and nowhere near a bed. We'll keep trying though. You're getting pretty keen on sitting on our laps. You still love your pacifier/ dummie.  You have two  - one is attached to some wooden beads and another is attached to a taggie blanket but you are no longer obsessed with them the way you used to be. 

We are feeling good about your sleep. All the hard work in those first 12 months seem to be really paying off.  Next time round however I might be a little less continuum concept and put a little more routine in place earlier. I was not a fan of having you cry it out but have realised over time that staying with you stimulated you too much and wasn't doing you any favours. Letting you vocalise your tiredness worked for you but was very hard for me. Mind you, if you ever gave an upset cry, I was with you immediately. Letting you go to sleep by yourself was one of the hardest things I have ever done as I never would have imagined that being baby led meant the baby didn't want me in the room! Seeing how you are at 16 months, I realise that you have always have been a very loving, cuddly yet very independent person in all matters.   

Sleep tight my sweetie.