I’m typing this really quietly because I’m scared. I’m scared of the tiny, little man upstairs and across the house behind closed doors in his crib who might hear me typing, or breathing, or existing, and ruin my winning streak — you see, I have actually managed to get this kid to sleep through the night for THREE whole nights. (And by “through the night” I’m not using some mommy term-of-art that attempts to make people feel better when they read BabyCenter or some book that assures them that “sleeping through the night” actually means sleeping for any 5-hour stretch. So, you see, you had already achieved your goal, and you didn’t even realize it. What do you mean you’re still exhausted?) No, I’m talking about the real deal here — 11-12 hours in a row. (On a related note, I have also heard moms say their kids sleep “through the night,” only waking to eat at midnight, 3am, and 4am. That would, objectively, not be considered sleeping through ANY period in the nighttime. But anyway. Enough parentheticals).
A little background: I, like most normal humans, love(d) sleep. My husband always jokes (accurately recalls) that when we first met, he would call or text me at some reasonable time mid-morning on the weekend only to hear from me around 2pm that I had just woken up. For reasons that I still don’t understand, this was actually surprising to him. But in my defense, I lived alone. In central Delaware. Working for the U.S. government. That kind of lifestyle requires a LOT of wine. And trips to Dover Downs.
Flash forward to 2013: Noah is born. I pooh pooh the warnings about sleep as the typical thing people have to say. Whatever, folks. This kid will sleep! Because I don’t DO no sleep. & you know what — he does! he sleeps like a champ. All night, every night. For almost 4 months!! I feel great, I feel victorious. I smile knowingly when the pediatrician tells me that, “unfortunately, most kids his age aren’t sleeping through the night.”
Then it happens. One night, I hear crying. I look at my phone. It’s… 2am? Then 4am? Then 5am? Then, you’re not going to go back to sleep at all? How many bottles can one baby safely drink in a 5-hour timeframe? Night after night after sleepless night. But, it’s okay. BabyCenter tells me this is normal. It’s just ‘4-month sleep regression.’ That must be it! Okay, we can do this for one month. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of such a pivotal, developmental milestone. No, in fact, I am HAPPY to accommodate this month of regression. Let’s just never sleep at all.
On Noah’s 5-month birthday, I literally, illogically, wake up giddy. Today is going to be a good day. BabyCenter had basically promised me. But it would not be so. 5-months, 6-months, 7-months, 8-months. Sometimes he would sleep. Kind of. Not really. Not like the good, ol’ days. And I forgot to mention my big mistake — somewhere along the way, I accidentally on purpose found out that Noah could just hold his own bottle in his crib and go back to sleep on his own. Sure, it wasn’t GREAT to wake up and hand him a bottle 2-4x a night, but at least it stopped the crying. Then I started noticing he wasn’t even drinking the bottles! He’d take a couple sips, roll over, and go back to sleep. Temporarily, of course. Oh no. This is bad. I’ve created a monster. A sleep terrorist. We have to stop him.
A hearty dinner of peas, orzo, and watermelon will carry him through the night, right?
Andy was leaving for a long work trip, so I figured this would be my opportunity. I geared up for sleep training. Like, no shit, “cry-it-out all you want because I can’t hearrrrr you” sleep training. I was going to do this. (We had tried in the past, but it’s just so sad (read: loud, grating, annoying)- to hear endless crying when you can just easily stop it with some milk). I got some advice, did a little research, and had a plan of action: I would put Noah to bed at 7pm, go in and give him a “dream feed” around 11pm without even waking him, then ignore any and all cries for milk the rest of the night, decreasing the “dream feed” amount by 1 oz/day until cutting it off cold turkey.
Night 1, I followed the instructions to the letter. But when I went to give him the dream feed, he was so sleepy that he only drank 1 oz of milk. Oh well, I thought, I guess we’ll see how this goes. And I didn’t hear from him again until 6am. And he was happy! Hmm, must have been a fluke. Night 2, practically the same schedule, and I didn’t hear from him until nearly 7am! Unreal. Night 3. Come on, seriously? Either this is the greatest coincidence in the world, Noah is reading my thoughts, or this actually works!
So, with all that said, I better go knock on wood.
Because you KNOW I just cursed myself.
The picture of victory.
