I read way too many baby board forums about babies sleeping through the night and it's starting to make me crazy. First of all I have to say technically "sleeping through the night" means five to six hours at this age, which lets be honest is so far from sleeping through the night, because five hours means I'm up before 1:00 feeding Addilyn. NOT sleeping through the night. So when people say their babies are sleeping through the night I don't really know what they mean.
I kind of (okay really) hate seeing other mom's pictures and statuses when they say how many hours their babies slept. An immediate wave of jealousy and frustration comes over me and then lots of thoughts of what am I doing wrong. I seriously celebrate when Addilyn sleeps a six hour stretch and wakes up only twice before 7:00. Chalk it up to four month sleep regression, a growth spurt, having a cold or just being a baby and these days I'd celebrate her going four straight hours just once through the night.
When she was two months old she slept a few eight hour stretches and I seriously felt like we were on top of our sleeping game. I thought we had an above average sleeper and were in for some many sleep filled nights ahead. Well our baby girl had a different plan, which is really no plan at all. She is all over the place with sleeping the last month and has not repeated that eight hour stretch once. And lately we are back to how she slept as a newborn.
Whenever I read someone's status about their champion sleeper or read a baby board post about the same, I want to know. Are they swaddled? Do you nurse them to sleep? Do you feed them on demand? Do you sneak some sleeping drugs into a night time bottle? And what I really want to ask and assume the answer is yes is "are you lying?" Because that one always makes me feel a little better about our situation.
This article has been the best thing I've read when it comes to sleep training. Besides making me laugh, it reminded me that I need to relax, keep trying and do what works best for us. Plus it's safe to say that Addilyn is just so smart she'll never get eaten by a dingo, day or night.
So we're working on baby steps in the sleep department, even if that means sleeping on the floor in Addilyn's room as we work on transitioning her to a crib. Just kidding. That would just be silly.
P.S. I have read many different sleep approaches, received a lot of wanted and unwanted advice and am kind of at a point of where we've tried everything we are willing to try the time being, so we're just going to keep trying. I'm banning myself from reading articles, books, and baby boards for the time being because it is making me crazy. So if I'm being completely honest, unless you want to come over and spend the night and show me in person your successful sleeping techniques just tell me to hang in there and that babies are babies and are hard sometimes. ; )
Oh and here is another article for any of your sleepless mamas that I loved.
