Where there’s a will, there’s some sleep

It seemed like D would never sleep well. Do you remember that? He was a very, very, very bad sleeper.

He would wake up every two hours all night, and it very slowwwwly increased until we hit four-hour stretches.

I was a bleary-eyed zombie every day. I thought I would never feel rested again.

It wasn’t until D was 13 (THIRTEEN!) months that he slept through the night. And I started feeling normal again.

(Then, of course, I got preggo again that month, so I knew my sleeping days were numbered — and all the more precious!)

I blamed D’s sleep habits on breastfeeding. I was sure that he was waking up so often because he was hungry, so I would nurse him.

I’m not saying that was a great idea or a horrible idea. It’s just a fact. It got him back to sleep, and so I did it. I would have done ANYTHING (short of giving him an elephant tranquilizer) to get some sleep.

When we stopped breastfeeding at 13 months, BOOM! He slept through the night. He turned into an incredible sleeper, and he still is.

These days, he goes to bed between 8 and 8:30 p.m. and sleeps straight through to around 8 a.m. LOVE IT.

Of course, I wonder if he would have done that earlier if I had been a little tougher about the midnight boobage, but mainly I just thank God he’s finally a good sleeper.

And now we have C.

She is a very different child from D. From the beginning, she has slept longer stretches. She has needed to nurse much less in the night than her brother (a.k.a. she is my favourite — j/k).

However, C is colicky, and D was not.

And that makes a huge difference.

With D, I was up every couple of hours all night, but he went down for the night reasonably early. He was a good-natured little guy for the most part, and didn’t have a problem getting to sleep (just staying asleep).

With C, she spends a good chunk of her evening crying and fussing. Every evening. And she will not sleep.

She will just demand to be carried around while draped over your arm, face-down, while you make shushing sounds loudly, jiggle and dance, and hold a soother in her piehole.

Last night (technically EARLIER THIS MORNING), it was 12:30 a.m. when I finally got her to sleep and collapsed into my own bed. I was up feeding her at 5, and then brought her into our bed to feed her at 7 (and have been awake ever since).

Despite last night, C has shown signs of getting better. There have been a couple of nights when I got her to sleep around 9:30 or 10. I know it will get better. At some point.

I am writing this post to myself as a reminder that at some point, C WILL go to sleep at the same time as D.

There WILL be a magic time when I put them BOTH to bed, and they both WILL sleep through the night.

It will be my choice how I spend a few whole HOURS of time in the evening, because I won’t be pacing and jiggling a crying baby until after midnight.

Not sure when that day will come, but I just have to remember that it WILL.