How Much Sleep Do You Get???

It’s 2:30am. Back in the old days, I’d just now be going to bed after a night on the town. I’m up now because little Maelin has decided to revert to her infant-habit of waking up every 2-3 hours during the night. It’s great fun.

This is what the last few nights for Maelin and I have looked like: Bedtime for baby at 10pm. I pump and clean up a bit and get to bed by 11:30pm. Baby is crying at 2:30am. I get up and feed her and put her back down by 3am. Baby is crying again at 5:30am. I get up again and feed her and put her back down at 6am. Baby is crying again at 7:30am. I mutter a few choice words and just put the bink back in her mouth because she can’t possibly be hungry again? Can she? I stay up and wait for her to go back to sleep because there’s nothing worse in the entire world than being so exhausted you can’t even walk a straight line and thinking the baby is asleep so you go back to bed just to hear her fussing again 1 minute later. I finally go back to sleep at 8:30am and baby wakes up for good at 9am. Count up my actual hours of sleep, if you dare. Remember, it takes a good 30 minutes to fall back asleep after I’ve been awake.

I’m too tired for much math, but I think my sleep totals about 5 hours: broken up into 4 different segments. No wonder I’m a zombie and cranky as hell.

When I’ve brought up this sleep issue to people in the know, they’ve all said, “3 months is the magic number for babies. Something just happens at 3 months and they start sleeping much better.” “If you can make it to 3 months, you’re golden.” “3 months is when the baby will start sleeping 5-6 hour stretches.” “Hang in there: she’s almost 3 months old and that’s when she’ll start sleeping longer.”

Maelin was 3 months old last Friday.

There are all sorts of “magic” solutions to help a baby sleep longer. I’ve heard of the “put cereal in her bottle before bed” trick, the “let her cry it out in 15 minute increments” trick, the “babywise trick of starving her during the day so she eats lots at night and therefore sleeps better” trick, etc. I wouldn’t mind putting cereal in her nighttime bottle that Kevin gives her, but our Dr. says not to give her any solids until she’s at least 4 months old. That’s another 4 weeks of this. I go back to work soon: how in the world am I going to function with 25 7-year-olds if I have minutes of sleep every night?

I don’t think there’s much of a solution for me. Parenting is all about patience, so I’ve been told. So I’ll continue to wake up all night long until the little darling decides to start sleeping for longer stretches. In the meantime, if you’re up at 2am, 5am, 7am, 9am, etc…send me an instant message. It’ll be less lonely.