Adventures in Sleeping

For those of you who have seen me in the last 6 1/2 months, you have probably detected some bags under my eyes and a crazed look on my face. That's because I'm the proud mother of a non-sleeper. I can count on one hand the number of times Lauren has slept more than 6 hours at a time in her life. And none of those times have been recently. For awhile it was just a couple times up a night, but lately, it's been 3 or 4 times a night. Combine that with a son who wakes me up sometime during the night to take him to the potty, and you've got one sleep deprived Mommy.

I've known in the back of my mind that we'd have to go the Crying-It-Out route with Lauren as we did with Mason. I wasn't dreading it quite as much this time around because 1.) I've done it before, 2.) she's generally more laid back than Mason is, and 3.) unlike Mason, she has the capacity to fall asleep when someone else it holding her and it doesn't always have to be while nursing. My biggest worry was Mason, who's a pretty light sleeper, waking up from the noise.

I've been waiting to do it with her until after she was able to roll over both ways (since she sleeps on her stomach), after she started eating solid food (so I wouldn't worry about her being hungry at night), after her first round of teeth came in (they seemed painful), and after her neck rash cleared up (she always scratched it at night). With all of those things checked off my list, and with the frustration with her in the middle of the night at an all time high, I picked last night as the night to start.

She fell asleep while nursing around 7:30 so I put her to bed. She usually gets back up around 10:00, but this time it was 8:15. I was sort of glad because both Dave and I were still up, and I didn't have to listen to her on my own. So I went in to her room, cuddled her for just a minute and put her back down to sleep without nursing. I watched TV while she fussed and cried for about 30 minutes. Finally there was silence. Thankfully, she never screamed too loud and Mason never woke up.

Throughout the night, I woke up on my own around the usual times Lauren wakes up. And each time I looked at the clock, I said a quick prayer of thanksgiving that she hadn't woken up yet. At 5:30 when I heard her moving around and making some noise, I waited awhile to see if she'd go back to sleep, but I could tell she was awake. But I didn't mind getting up. It's the most sleep both of us have had in a really long time.

And the ironic thing about her getting more sleep than usual last night? She had an extra long nap this morning and she's back down for another nap now. Sleep begets sleep.

Hopefully tonight will be smooth sailing for us.