Why don't babies just sleep? Why do they insist on screaming their eyes out instead of just taking a nap, when you and they
both know that all they need is some sleep? Now, my little gal may not have screamed much today, but she certainly didn't sleep. Unless you count one 10 minute nap. I don't. I don't count that. Now adults, when they're sleepy, they just fall asleep! On the couch, at their desk, standing up, curled up on the floor - we're not picky. We just want sleep.
Sleep. SLEEP!!!! What is it about being young that makes you feel so determined to stay awake? Perhaps it's that their lives have been so short that they naively believe that by sleeping they'll miss something? While we adults understand truly and completely that sleep is way more important than anything that could possibly happen while we're sleeping. We also understand that if we do miss anything, chances are, it will probably happen again later, hopefully while we're awake. To babies, however, everything is new, and they haven't yet grasped that life is repetitive, and things don't just happen once. It's a sweet kind of naivete. But when combined with my wisdom and exhaustion... it's just, well... exhausting. Especially when you factor in that my little ones' love of being awake does not only pertain to daylight hours. For the past few nights little E has gone to bed at 8:30, and then woken up at 11:30, 1, 3, 4,5,6, and then again at 7 - finally for good. Do you know the physical toll it takes on a person to get up every hour during the night? My body has started getting E out of bed without my knowing. I
wake up standing in E's bedroom, pulling her out of her crib, not knowing how I got there! After laying her down, the smallest sigh or whimper through the monitor can turn my blood cold and make my heart stop beating. The fear that she is waking up runs so deep, I feel almost sick. So today, sleep deprivation took over. Fatigue turned to panic. And I pulled out all the stops. I once heard that giving baby a bath with Johnson's Baby bath for Bedtime helps baby sleep better. So I went and bought some of that. With the matching lotion. I gave E a bath, and lathered, rinsed, repeated, lathered, rinsed, repeated.... each scrub-a-dub was the echo of a prayer that this child would sleep tonight. In
The Happiest Baby on the Block he speaks repeatedly about swaddling and it's magical abilities to help baby calm and sleep. So swaddle-dwaddle went baby E. White noise. Everyone talks about white noise and helping baby sleep. "White noise imitates the sound of the womb and helps baby sleep! Bla bla bla bla bla bla" So to I-tunes I went. I searched and searched and searched until I found a nice recording of Ocean Waves. Set to repeat over and over, aaaaaannd,
PLAY. Then I, turned on the monitor ahead of time so I wouldn't wake her up when I reached over to turn it on after laying her down. Then I grabbed some Dr. Seuss ("You should read to your baby! Establish a routine for bedtime! This will help baby learn when it's time to sleep") dimmed the lights ("dimming lights helps baby settle down and realize that it's time to sleep") sat in the rocking chair ("rocking mimics the motion of the womb and helps baby settle down and fall asleep") pulled out my baby-feeder (c'mon, let's face it, that's all their good for lately. ("Feeding baby just before bed helps baby fall asleep and stay asleep longer")), and rocked and fed my baby while reading to her. I eventually gave up the reading because it was too distracting for her. So as far as I can tell, my desperation for some true sleep forced me to follow every single piece of "getting baby to sleep" that my mind could remember. She is asleep now.... I really hope this works. I can't even remember sleep. I only have vague ideas of what it was like to sleep through the night. I haven't done that in over a year. Sleep.... Is it wonderful?!?!?!
