The Sleep Chronicles

I can't even begin to count how many times I have been asked, by perfect strangers, mind you, if my baby is a good sleeper. As if my frazzled, half-hazardly dressed, bags under eyes look wasn't enough to answer said inquiry. I mean, really? Why must people ask such ridiculously stupid questions? I have come to the conclusion that they merely want to torture poor sleep deprived parents with their redundancy.

Although both my boys have actually been pretty good sleepers (for babies anyway), they both reached the point when we could no longer tolerate the lack of sleep, for fear of losing our marbles. Both of them, after sleeping most of the night for months, reverted back to waking every couple hours around 5-6 months of age. They just teased us with 6,7,8 hour stretches of sleep to come back and slap us in the face with 2 or less hours of continuous sleep.

For Henry, the transition to crap sleep has occurred over the past two months. And, man does it suck. After happily sleeping in the co-sleeper next to our bed for the past 4 plus months, he suddenly decided that he could not and would not sleep anywhere but right next to me. As in actually touching me all night. I love to cuddle with a baby as much as the next woman, but I sleep like absolute crap with a little minion snuggled up to me all night. I worry about squishing him, I wake with every little sound/movement he makes and it was driving me crazy. Plus, Henry wasn't rested either and it was negatively affecting his naps.

Tired, sleep deprived mama + tired, fussy baby = really bad combination. Especially when said mama has a (part-time) job and a toddler to take care of. Despite what the general public thinks of attorneys, my job does take a significant amount of brain power and focus. Sleep deprivation does not foster these things. Plus, a nursing mama cannot consume massive amounts of caffeine. I kept forgetting appointments, losing my keys, forgetting my cell phone at home (not good when you have kids a daycare), not to mention having an utter lack of energy to do anything more than veg on the couch after the kids are in bed.

We had planned on having the boys share Ollie's room, which is upstairs with our room, but I could't really justify messing with Ollie's sleep, which is generally really good. So, we converted the spare room into Henry's room (more on the transformation later). He had been successfully napping in his crib (in our room) for few months in preparation for moving him into his crib for the nights at some unspecified point in the future, so we decided to go for it. We moved all the baby crap out of our room (where it shall never return) and into Henry's new room (formerly the spare room).

We "sleep trained" Ollie when he did a similar transition to crap sleep around six months. He quickly adjusted to sleeping by himself with minimal fussing. We didn't go all out Ferber Method Cry It Out method, but we did a similar variation. Ollie has been a fantastic sleeper ever since. We never really had to have him cry it out for naps or in the middle of the night. He just really seemed to sleep better by himself.

So we "sleep trained" Henry too. It was relatively painless. He fussed on and off for about 30 minutes the first night and has hardly fussed going down at night since then. KNOCK ON WOOD. His naps have been better (still nursing him down for most naps - unless he doesn't want to) and he is only waking up once a night (I still nurse him back to sleep then too). It is working out fabulously.

So now those annoying strangers lurking in the grocery store, who hunt me down to comment on Henry's adorable chip-munk cheeks (they are freaking adorable) can feel free to ask me about his sleep patterns. I am better rested now, so I will try to be condescending when I answer that he sleeps great, for a baby.