Mama in the City

I love sleep and I love a lot of it. I function at my best when I clock in at least nine hours of uninterrupted sleep. You can always count on me to want a nice afternoon siesta too. However, my baby is not a great sleeper and I am feeling it. I am tired and over tired and would like a nap and a big long lounge in bed in the morning. Ben has been a tough sleeper since he was born into this world. Never one to go the extra mile and sleep through the night or sleep away the afternoon. He was a busy baby in utero and has kept up his claim to fame once he was born.

Ben cried for so many hours as a tiny baby and we learned to cope, and just plain old survive, by co sleeping with him. He loved it and thrived! Slept and nursed! Slept and nursed! He never had any long wake up periods and was seriously content but things got tricky once the boy could move and crawl. He was sleeping but I was not and my body was just aching from sharing the bed space. Plus my husband had started to become accustomed to sleeping on the pull out couch too often. Once we moved to our new apartment we thought now would be a great time to change things up. He is in a crib in his own room and he despised it at first and let us know! Now he falls asleep easily in his crib on his own but wakes up frequently through the night. Sometimes for an easy soother replacement and sometimes for a bit longer.

Sometimes I have felt so desperate that I will admit to constantly googling the term 'my baby does not sleep through the night' or asking other mamas what their tricks were. Sadly, we have tried ALL the tricks and we have read many top sleep books and checked out various websites and listened to great advice. All of these in some combination have been a bust. We have now come to a place in our parenthood adventures where we have just accepted that this is our baby. He wakes up briefly through the night and needs to be parented a bit. It is exhausting and tiring but we realize this is such a short phase in our lives and we are up to the challenge. For now.

I sometimes wonder how different my life would be if I had a baby who slept well and slept long long through the night but we have come face to face with reality. We got the non sleep and he is full of day time energy, loves to laugh, play games and 'dance' when I sing. He just doesn't sleep all night long.