I've been planning on writing this post for awhile, but kept thinking it wasn't an issue anymore, or wouldn't be much longer, so why write about it? Unfortunately, I've been telling myself this for a couple of weeks now, so I think it's finally time to get it out. You see, Amanda will be eight months old on Friday, EIGHT MONTHS, and she still isn't consistently sleeping through the night. Except for a few, wonderful occasions, she wakes up sometime in the three o'clock hour each morning and stays awake until around 5 a.m. Everyday. I, of course, am an idiot, and still stay up late because it's the only time I ever get to myself, so I've been running on a disjointed 5-6 hours of sleep for months.
In the beginning, I convinced myself that I was breastfeeding, and breastfed babies take longer to sleep through the night, so it was okay. Then the holidays came and it just wasn't going to happen at other people's houses with all five of us in one room so I waiting until the beginning of the year. We were getting closer, and I really wasn't giving in, but then we went on two more long weekend trips that messed it all up. So, when we got home from Miami over spring break and didn't have anymore trips planned until mid-May, I decided I was going to be tough and get this done.
I had a little help, at least on the metal preparation side. People kept telling me about babies that were Amanda's age or younger that we're sleeping all night long. People who were getting a full night's sleep. On one particular morning, very early, after I had been up for a couple of hours with Amanda and only gotten a few hours sleep, Charlie mentioned how Joshua was sleeping through the night and had been for awhile. Joshua is only a couple of days older than Amanda. Of course that was not the best time to pass along that information, as I was dragging my butt out of bed to get Sarah ready for school. Then Sharon told me that Reagan had been sleeping through the night since she was 11 weeks, and it only took two nights of a little crying to make it happen. I knew it would be a little tougher with Amanda because she was older, but how hard could it be? The books say you can do it in three days. With Andy it only took three days (we won't talk about how long it took with Sarah, that's a whole different story). No problem.
Yes, that was three weeks ago. Three days my a**. I'll admit I didn't go hard core at first. I was nice. The first week or so I would get up with her and rock her but refused to feed her. I needed to break her habit of wanting to eat. She didn't need to eat, she was just used to doing it. I knew that wouldn't really solve the problem, because I was picking her up and rocking her and giving her attention, so another week later I no longer fed her or picked her up. When we would come in the room, instead of it calming her down, she would cry even harder and longer than when we weren't in the room. The next week I started letting her cry longer before going to her room. Ten, fifteen minutes. Still she cried. Every time she would keep it going and then peter out close to 5a.
Then, two days ago, I started to have faith in the baby books again. Maybe they were right after all. I walked into her room in the middle of the night and instead of crying harder, she stopped crying. I went over to the crib and started smoothing her hair back, sort of petting her head. Her eyes started to close and her breathing became softer. She wasn't going to let me leave that easily, but when I pulled up a chair and sat next to the crib she didn't cry and tried to go back to sleep, calmed by my presence. The whole thing took maybe 20-30 minutes and then I was able to go back to bed. An accomplishment for both of us.
Unfortunately last night we had a few things working against us. First, she's teething. I think she actually cut her second tooth last night, so maybe tonight will be better. Second, we have family in town so we're running all over the place having fun and not putting the kids to bed on time, especially Amanda. Third, she's starting to roll over in bed and hasn't really figured out the sleeping on her stomach thing. She gets onto her stomach but then doesn't know what to do with her head or face. I think she wants to sleep that way but just isn't comfortable with it yet. A lot of the crying last night was just trying to get situated. So it could have been a combination of being over tired, her teeth hurting and not knowing how to sleep comfortably.
Whatever it is, I hope we're almost there. In the past month she's had so many milestones - first teeth, rolling over, sitting up, eating solids - so many changes for such a small little person. I'm sure that's some of it. However, I'm getting tired of the 3 a.m. wake up call. No, I'm way past getting tired, I'm just plain tired. So we'll give this new routine three days, just like the baby books say, and maybe, just maybe, my darling number three will be sleeping through the night for good.
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