Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Sleeping Like A Baby

I have always found that phrase to be misleading. Everyone knows new parents don't get to sleep much thanks to their little bundles of joy. Rather, these little ones come out sleeping for 2 hour stretches, waking to nurse and meet their snuggle needs. New mothers are told to "sleep when the baby sleeps." Nice in theory- if you are capable of napping but unfortunately I do not have that skill.
Then, magically the baby starts sleeping more, like a 6 hour stretch and we are told we are lucky that the baby is "sleeping through the night." I don't know about you, but I have never thought 10pm-4am was a good night's sleep. But since we just came from a land of only 2 hour stretches we appreciate what we can get.

Along comes the wonderful world of sleep regression and many moms find themselves up every 1-2 hours or if they are lucky 3 hours. To me, that 6 hours I was enjoying the week before now seems like a mean tease. I pry my eyes open wondering how it could be possible that the baby has already forgotten how to sleep. I hope it is just a stage...but no...at least not a short one.

Now, sleep is unpredictable at best. Samantha is now trying to learn to sleep and this means I am getting even less sleep. For her, at six months old, sleeping like a baby means going to bed at 10 and me praying "please god let her sleep!" The last several nights it has been anything from 30 minute stretches to almost 4 hours. I miss terribly sleeping longer stretches. I know the day will come, in the not too distant future hopefully, when she is sleeping for 10-11 hours straight but that seems like a dream at this point.

Tonight, I will go to bed, praying that she will sleep hours, plural. And I dream of the day when she doesn't sleep like a baby, but instead sleeps like a teenager- when I have to wake her up instead of the other way around.

1 comment:

  1. I should write more often. Last nigh Sami slept 7.5 hours! Longest amount of time in almost 2 months. Then she was hard to wake up this morning...my husband made the comment that it was like a teenager. I laughed when I found out he hadn't read the blog yet.

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