Tuesday, July 22, 2014

The quest for sleep

So last night I got completely fed up with my shitty sleep and let Theo cry it out. Occasionally we get a decent night's sleep - still woken up a lot, but at least not that I would remember it - but mostly it's Theo up just about every hour or two, mangling my nipples. It's awful and I can't take it any more. So for lack of any other kind of plan, I have taken to just letting him scream/fuss/whatever. Last night I thought it was reasonable to feed him halfway through the night at midnight  - but other than that, forget it. In the wee hours I went and slept on the couch.

He is currently screaming his head off in his crib while I watch on the baby monitor. I have been in to comfort him three times. He's just going to have to figure it out now. 

I do this with no plan, no malice, and no real sense of purpose. All I know is I am exhausted, he has nothing wrong with him, and I don't know what else to do. I am not in a position to work with him through this sleep regression or whatever-the-fuck because I have another child to care for and a mountain of work to get through.

I also would really like to establish better sleep habits before my event in six weeks. Being woken up all night and then up at the crack of dawn with a two-year-old, then enduring the intensity of the stress that goes on at my event...no sir. That's a recipe for a disaster right there. So this child simply must start sleeping better before then. Plenty of other babies his age give their mothers good sleep at this point. Let's get with the program, kiddo.


1 comment:

  1. I'm a firm believer in sleep training. For the health and happiness of both mother AND baby. It may be "natural" to nurse every hour all night long, but that doesn't mean that either party is better off. Not saying you ought to sleep train a newborn... but cozying up to the all night milk bar at several months old isn't, IMO, strictly necessary, either. All that by way of saying... you go girl! It WILL get easier. And life is so much better when you aren't perma-exhausted.

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