How I’m Finally getting my sleep

If you’ve been reading my blog and following me for a while you’d remember that my biggest challenge with N was her (lack of) sleep habits! I can’t put my finger on when exactly it began but I feel like it started to get terrible when she started solids so that must be around 6 months. To be safe, I’d say it was since her 7th month leap/sleep regression. Thing just never got better from there. In fact, it just kept getting worse.

At first the problem was having to rock and pat her to sleep. It was mad tiring. Then she would wake up every 2 hours, and I’d have to rock and pat her each time. I remember sleeping on the floor of her room because it was just easier. Then she went through a period where she would wake up and stay up for hours, refusing to go back to sleep. We created a fort in the living room as her secondary bed, where we’d bring her once she woke up in the wee hours. It was horrible. I was sleep-deprived, moody, unhealthy and downright unhappy. Thankfully, that phase ended (after what felt like 45 years) and she stopped staying awake in the middle of the night.

But she continued to wake up every 2-3 hours all the way past her first birthday, up until she turned 16 months. When I realised that she was starting to understand and fathom me better, I realised that it was a good time to teach her what bedtime means and is. I was never one for sleep-training, I truly was never onboard the CIO method and all the rest (perhaps I was just in denial, hoping that she would learn by herself sooner than later… never happened). But now that she was mature enough to understand, I felt I would give it a go.

I explained things to her step by step. “Okay, you’re going to have your shower, then dinner, and then soon it will be time to sleep okay?” Of course they just look at you like “what?” and then you ask yourself why you’re speaking to a toddler the way you’d speak to a full-grown child (although, sidetrack: studied have shown that if you speak to your children properly/maturely/adult-ly from a young age, they mature up faster). But truth is, they actually do understand you!

When it was time for bed that first night, I decided to start a new big-girl routine for her by letting her pick out 2 books to read in bed before night-night. “Okay, which 2 books do you want to read tonight?” Then we’d sit on her bed and read the books (as many times as she wants). Then I let her latch while we say our prayers, and then I lay her down and kiss her goodnight.

And then I leave the room.

And then she would cry. Not for long, and not horribly, but it was more like a where-are-you-mama kind of cry. Heartbreaking, but I told myself it was for the better. It would last for about 30 minutes or so. For the first 3 nights at least.

Then she got better. Quieter. Settled herself faster. Now, it’s 5-7 minutes of book-latch-prayers-kisses, no crying at all, and she can be asleep in 5 minutes.

In return, I now get about 12 uninterrupted hours to myself to have dinner, catch up on Netflix and have a good rest myself. It also means I no longer nurse her in the night because when she heads to bed at 8pm, I usually don’t see her again till 8am!

It has truly been a ride and when I think back on those nights I’ve cried and cried with her, just trying to get her back to sleep, I think about how there must be so many other Mamas out there going through the same thing. If you’re reading this and you’re one of them, know that you’re never ever alone. Just look out your window, up at the night sky, and tell yourself that another struggling Mama is looking at the sky just like you.