Of course it bloody didn't. Are you stark, staringly insane? Everything in the above statement is a bald-faced lie. We're all, basically, dead over here. But I'm just managing to amimate my sleepless corpse enough to type. I hope you appreciate the effort. You are welcome.
The first night started off promisingly. Lumpy went off to sleep in the cot without a complaint. At about 10.45pm, we were sitting on the couch, feeling deliciously smug, looking forward to our first decent night's sleep in over six months, and wondering why we didn't move our little darling into his own space earlier.
At 10.46pm we were racing upstairs to save our baby, who was clearly being eaten to death by a pack of wolves, so intense and horrifying were his cries. Imagine our surprise when we found no slathering carnivores, but just an inconsolable child, pausing in his screams only to look at us reproachfully for abandoning him. Lumpy has rarely been so upset - even the boob would not console him - initially. After showing his displeasure for about twenty minutes, he finally forgave me enough to have a feed.
And the whole experiment almost ended there. We were this close () (and that's very, very close, let me tell you) to just giving up and bringing him back into our room, where he would no doubt remain for the rest of our natural lives.
But we were strong. We put him back into his cot, and, eventually, he fell asleep. And so did we. For a short while. He woke up a couple more times during the night, but he didn't howl in quite such a spectacular fashion.
(And now I just have to point out that I've had to break off from writing this post about seven times so far, to tend to the aforementioned child, and it's now 9.32pm and he's still refusing to go to sleep, so you might start to suspect that this one doesn't have a happy ending. Sorry for the spolier.)
Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, lack of sleep, baby waking up constantly, blah blah blah, my god, even I realize how boring this is, and I'm living it. I do apologise. We had a few days in the middle of the hell where he only woke up a couple of times in the night, and we dared to think that maybe this wasn't all going to be a complete nightmarish disaster. But then - ha, ha! - it all went to shit again.
I wish I had something more positive and amusing to tell you, but frankly the concept of another night like the last two is like a big grey cloud hanging over me, and I just want to cry. I'm trying to dredge something funny out of that, but, no. My sense of humour has just dribbled out of my right earlobe.
So I shall just have to give you some more photos.
Sitting! Look! We're doing really well at that.
Right, looks like that still needs a bit of work too. Sigh.
I love the toppling-over phase. Does he do it in glorious slow motion, as it appears from the photos? That is best.
ReplyDeleteYou have my sympathies regarding sleep. We are slowly moving ours towards her own room -- right now she sleeps in her cot (actually a sort of tent cot thing) but in our bedroom. She's alone in there for naps and until we come to bed ourselves at 11mumblety o'clock, but available to pull into our bed when she wakes up too early in the morning. And there it has stuck for quite some time.
We need to start moving the whole configuration over to a separate room soon, so we can all stop waking each other up, but keep putting it off as travel and other things get in the way. Also I am afraid of what will happen to our early mornings.
I just saw your comment about lack of sleep and waking every hour, and thought OH HELLO. So here I am.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read beyond this post, so I don't know what advice you've had re. sleep training, but what helped us get past this stage was 1. making sure the baby ate loads at suppertime, and 2. making sure he didn't nap after 3pm.
We dedicated Ian's Christmas holiday time off work, when he didn't have to be up in the morning, to sleep-training the baby. Took it in turns to lose sleep until the baby got used to going for 6-8 hours without a feed. Took it in turns to reach out a reassuring hand at WTF o'clock in the morning, until he stopped waking every hour.
I really feel your pain about dreading bedtime. I used to get near tears every ngiht, because the bedroom became a scene of tears and hell and broken sleep, and I wondered what the point was of going to bed at night. I got fed up with apologising to all my friends for the fact that all I ever talked about was hours of baby sleep.
It does get better, it does, it does, it really does. I'm sorry it's crap for you now.
Thanks, Antonia. Maybe we should try the not napping after 3pm thing - though, illogically, it often seems that the tireder he is, the worse he sleeps at night. But we seem to have a generally irrational baby (and here I was, thinking they were paragons of logic - what a twat I am).
ReplyDeleteGenerally, we really don't have it that bad. He's never slept through the night, but he had got to a point before this of just stirring once or twice, and then only waking properly at around 5.30, which is basically morning in baby world, so I could live with that. I think what we have is spectacularly bad timing, in that his teething seems to be reaching a real crisis point (though I have a strange feeling I've been saying that for the last three months or so. This time, there really is something poking through his gums, though. I'm sure.), just as we decided to move him into his own room. Go us and our brilliant planning. It's just scary how quickly lack of sleep completely warps your whole perspective until you find yourself weeping at the prospect of making three meals and sitting there and feeding them to him, and oh god, can I go back to work now please?
I'm generally just being a bit melodramatic and doom, woe, etc. We will live, and so will he (probably). No one's dead or dying. In a few months I'll have forgotten all about this and be pining for these days, I'm sure.
Thank you for coming over to comment, and thanks for the reassurance it gets better. Once they're at university, right?
Adore your blog, by the way. I don't think I've ever read anything as funny and generally all-round brilliant as Ossie's birth story.