After my sleep training boasts, things are really needing addressed again. SB is spending altogether too much time in our bed. I can't count the number of times I wake up and look to my side to see two sleeping boys. And I think, again, why am I so often awake when they are asleep? The reason that we haven't solved the sleep thing is that I really do not want to listen to crying at night and so I just feed him. Which has led to problems. Not least my desire to inflict violence on anyone whose baby 'has always slept through the night'.
I secretly pray that they will suddenly experience sleep problems about a week after I have solved ours. Some books say there is no way a 6 month old needs to wake in the night for food and that it is just habit. Other books say that some 6 month old babies will need to feed in the night. I also suspect many parents are lying their asses off. Or, to be kinder, are wildly exaggerating. In my book sleeping through the night is 7pm-7am. Anything less than that is not sleeping through the night. One woman I spoke to told me her daughter slept through the night but it transpired that she meant from 11pm to 5am. I'm not judging - as D says, we all do what we need to in order to get by, but please don't call it sleeping through the night. Regardless of anyone else, SB does have a problem and he possibly eats more at night than during the day. Daytime is too exciting to be spent eating as far as he is concerned. But it has to stop. I'm the boss. Yes I am.I should say that SB did sleep through the night two nights in a row in August. But he has never managed to do it again. We have no idea why he did it in the first place and no idea why he stopped.
Tonight, I decided to make sure that I put him in his cot AWAKE. We'd started to do that in August and then I slowly lapsed back to feeding him to sleep. So now I'm incorporating a bedtime story into his routine. From now on, he'll get a story after milk and before sleep. When I brought him through to his room after his feed tonight he was asleep. I sat down on the rocking chair and got the book out. He was still asleep. I started to read the story - 'That's Not My Penguin'. Still he slept. Is there anybody there?? Usually I'm creeping through, dreading the slightest sound or jolt that might wake him before 'the transfer' to the cot, and now I'm reading aloud to a sleeping baby, sitting on my knee. We did fuzzy tummy penguin, velvety wing penguin, shiny beak penguin, silky head penguin and rubbery feet penguin - nothing. Only a light snore. I got the last page of the book and my final-sentence tone of voice 'that's my penguin' woke him. I held my breath. How awake was he going to get? I wanted drowsy but books can make SB go limb-thrashing crazy with excitement. His arm started to stir. It moved towards the book. But it was just going to gently stroke the fluffy penguin on the last page. I picked him up, said goodnight to his animals, put him in his cot and.....crying. But only for 30 seconds. Hooray.
Next, the difficult bit. Letting him cry at night. He's not getting a feed until 2am tonight so he'll just have to cry before that. And then I plan to stretch the night feeds until there aren't any any more. But the trouble is, I've had to face up to the fact that I actually quite like feeding him in the night. Just once mind. Not three times like last night. But, still, the thought of stopping altogether actually makes me feel a bit sad. Like saying goodbye to night time SB forever.
Clearly I'm quite mad.Oh b******s - it's 21.48 and he's just woken up because we laughed too loud at the telly. Long night ahead.
