Sleep – More of an optional thing

So I did something I thought I would never do again… I bought a book on how to get your baby to sleep.  I decided a while ago most books about how to take care of your baby were unrealistic and more than anything else, just make you feel like a bad parent if you are not following their advice exactly.  Parenting magazines are a whole different category of unrealistic and I usually just get irritated reading them at the doctor’s office with how out of touch with reality they are.

So happy this morning

Before however, my kids generally slept.  Or I felt I had a good hold on how to handle it during the first year.  Summer is just getting worse and worse with her nighttime sleeping.  I know it is partly my fault because I usually respond immediately to her to keep her from waking up the whole house.  I feel like I am a much different person than I was when Ahnna and Isaac were babies.  I had a much shorter fuse then and if I was fed up with how much they were getting up in the night it was a lot easier for me to put my foot down.  Usually once I decided I wasn’t going to give them a bottle at night or stay in the room until they fell asleep, it was the best decision ever because they would start sleeping better almost immediately.

Summer used to be great at putting herself back to sleep even though she woke up 10 times a night. I would just put her bink back in her mouth and she was good until I gave her her one bottle a night.  If she was Ahnna or Isaac I never would have gotten up to put their bink back in THAT often but with wanting every one else to sleep well and being much more patient I always did it.  She wasn’t waking because she was hungry because she would eat well before bed and most the time not even finish the bottle I gave her.  It has become worse since she started moving around.  Now that she can get on her hands and knees and wants to pull herself up, she is just too wiggly to get herself back to sleep, so she just cries.   When I finally get her to sleep, she wakes up an hour later and cries some more.  Last night was again the most she has been awake.  I’m not a fan of her breaking her own records all the time.  I need to learn some other method. Lot’s of people have said how great Baby Wise is so I will give it a try.

The only thing making my sleepless nights bearable is for some reason I still have a good amount of energy during the day.  I think it is a tender mercy.  Especially when Isaac had a hard night as a baby, the next day was absolutely horrible to endure.