Wednesday, June 11, 2008

No longer sleepLESS in CO!

Sleep. A necessity. A must. A hot commodity! But it is amazing the amount of sleep interruptions a human can stand. It is also quite remarkable to me that there are babies who sleep a 5 to 6 hour stretch at night after just 3 months of life, and on the other hand, there are those babies who will NOT sleep 5 or 6 hours straight for a LONG time.

My youngest has been one of THOSE babies. She has been one of those babies who would not sleep for a 5 hour stretch at night for a LONG time. As a mater of fact, she wouldn't even sleep for more than 3 hours at a time without nursing.

Granted, I am on my 4th baby, and I have yet to have one of the babies who sleeps "through the night" within their first year. My second baby was the closest; he did sleep 4 to 5 hour stretches for a while at about 4 months old. But it was a short phase, and he began waking after 2 or 3 hours again before long.

Still, after 20.5 months of life (as of yesterday), my 4th child still had not slept more then 3 hours at a time without waking up to nurse. That means that for the last 627 days (but who's counting) I haven't had a night of sleep that put more than 3 hours together at a time of uninterrupted sleep, and consequently neither had she.

It has really been a blessing that the two of us have had any coping skills when life posed the usual challenges that it does. But, when I think of it, this regularly interrupted sleep does explain the many days of mommy being a bit short on patience and falling asleep anytime she sat still. And it does point to why baby, who is mostly good natured and happy-go-lucky has had her moments of screaming and stomping her feet. Of course, that could also be due to the amount of distance between her and her 2nd birthday!

At any rate, that all may be about to change. Now I'm not one to count my chickens early, but it is an exciting prospect here. This morning, for the first time in her lifetime, I was blessed with the strange sensation of a good night's sleep. It was FABULOUS! When my husband got up to tend to our earliest risers, it was SO weird not to be groggy and out of it. I actually laid there awake wondering what that strange feeling was.

Rest. Ahhhhhhhh. It was SO nice. Thank you, baby. Thank you. May we have many, many more of those.

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Any parents looking for a system to help your child sleep better at night, or to help them GET to sleep at night . . . here is a great resource I found:

http://www.pantley.com/elizabeth/
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