I’m not one to complain about my situation and especially about my kid but oh dear God I really need N to sleep better.
To be fair, the first half of her life, she was a fantastic sleeper. She would sleep fine most of the time and it was easy putting her down. All went downhill since she went through her first sleep regression phase at 4 months. Since then, her naps have been at 30mins each, varying times of the day and she’s still a lighter sleeper than me (and I wake up at the sound of my upstairs neighbour closing their door). When I observe her sleep, I can tell that it’s light sleep (REM stage?) because her breathing doesn’t slow down and her eyes sometimes still flutter. She’s not getting the “restful” sleep that she needs. Which leads to the next problem.
Bedtime. On the nights she goes down easy, she wakes up every hour at least thrice and then per 2-3hours after that. Other nights it’s just exhausting from the get-go. She has never slept through the night in her life and I have yet to get more than 4 continuous hours of sleep myself. I feel like the last 7 months have just been one extremely long day.
I’ve read and tried it all – have a bedtime routine, keep the room dark, white noise, give a light massage. I’m exhausted. The lack of sleep really messes up my system. It makes me moody, temperamental and stressed out because I’m tired… which affects my supply too but I’ll save that for another post.
I know it could be a whole myriad of reasons. Maybe it’s because I recently moved her to her cot in the nursery for bedtime (she used to be in a co-sleeper in the master). Maybe it’s another sleep regression phase. Or perhaps it’s a developmental leap because she’s learning a whole set of new skills (she began to crawl correctly, pull herself up to stand in her cot, do the finger dance for Its Bitsy Spider, and a few more).
MAYBE IT’S EVERYTHING COMBINED TO PRODUCE THE MOTHER OF ALL NIGHTMARES FOR MAMA.
Anyway. These past few days I’ve been *trying* to work on her naps. I read somewhere something about intercepting the end of each of her sleep cycles and be there to soothe her into the next one. So what I do is I enter her nursery every 30mins (I’m guessing that’s how long/short her cycle is) and I gently pat and shush her. Sometimes she stirs, sometimes she doesn’t. But so far, I’ve seen change! There’s light at the end of this long long tunnel!
I’d like to say for certain that this has reflected a similar positive change to her night sleep, but no, not yet. She still wakes up every 2-3hours. Sometimes I’m not even sure if she’s hungry but nursing always helps her go back to sleep so I pop it out anyway.
Amidst all of the sleep deprivation, I’m hopeful that one day, I can close my eyes at 11pm and wake up only at 7am.