It’s the never-ending saga.  The joyful new parents bring home their tiny infant.  As the infant adjusts to his new surroundings, he takes his time doing what all babies do - eat, sleep, and poop.  The new parents are especially excited about the sleep part.  Then, something crazy happens.  He gets older.  After about a month, he’s not sleeping the 20+ hours a day.  Supposedly, he is now in a regular schedule of 3-4 naps during the day and sleeping a lot during the night.  Of course, he wakes frequently during the night, but the joyful parents have read all the books.  They’ve read that their baby will be sleeping through the night by the time they are four months old.  How exciting!  But, then, what’s that?  Sleeping through the night means five hours at a stretch.  What kind of cruel joke is that?  Well, okay, then.  Five hours is better than getting up every hour.  We can handle that for a while.  After all, it’s just going to get better, right?

Well, as Phil and I have found out, it doesn’t always.  It’s a good thing that Noah is so cute and that he rewards us with lots of smiles and giggles because it’s so difficult to get him to sleep now-a-days.  In an earlier post, we mentioned that he was “sleeping through the night”.  You know, getting those amazing five hours at a time.  When he was doing this, he’d wake twice during the night, feed, then go right back to sleep.  Notice that I wrote, “When”.  That’s right.  He doesn’t do that anymore.  I don’t know what it is.  He is now much more dependent on us to sleep than he used to be.  Could it be that we’ve messed with his schedule so much since he’s been born?  That’s definitely true.  We’ve taken him on two big trips, had lots of company here, and moved him into his own room.  I’ve also changed his sleeping schedule so many times hoping that he would sleep more.  I should have been content with what I had!  He is now sleeping, at most, two hours at a stretch.  He almost always would like to nurse at those wakings, but he really isn’t hungry.  He just wants his mommy time.  And I really do enjoy my Noah time.  But I miss my sleeping time.

So, what’s a parent to do?  Well, as we re-read through all the books, we find that we have a few options.  There is the Ferber method, aka the Cry It Out method.  This involves letting the baby cry for increasing amounts of time until they learn to self-soothe.  It usually only takes a couple of days before the baby learns to sleep through the night.  Although seemingly a quick fix, I’m definitely not a fan of this option.  I know that many parents use this method or other modes of CIO, but I feel that this would be hard on our family.

On the other hand, there is the longer option of putting your baby down in stages until they feel comfortable with their crib and with going to sleep by themselves without the help of mom or dad as portrayed in the book, The No-Cry Sleep Solution.  This one appeals to me, but it can take months to get to that final stage.

Thankfully, as a stay-at-home mom, I’m able to catch up on my sleep when Noah takes his naps during the day.  Even if they are only 35-45 minutes long, that is something!  There is something appealing about cuddling with your baby as they drift off to sleep.  Something that I’m sure I’m going to miss as Noah grows up.  So, right now, I’m just going to be content with the short time I have with my infant, and enjoy the time I have with him… even if it is 2AM.