girlfiend

It’s 11 o’clock and where’s the Fiendling? Still asleep. As usual, as soon as we get back into some semblance of a sleep schedule something else comes along to screw it all up. This time another tooth threatening to emerge some time in the next several weeks is ruining my sleep. It’s in there and it’s visible, but it’s not at the surface yet. During the day he’s mostly fine, with a few bouts of whining for no reason and ear-pulling, but at night it just keeps him up.

No point in crying it out when it’s pain keeping him awake, so last night (and the night before) he slept in bed with us, waking me up every couple of minutes. He tossed and turned and whimpered and whined and slept for a couple of good two hour stretches. The last time he woke was around 8, so now that it’s morning, he’s in his first good three hour stretch of the night and I don’t have the heart to wake him. I barely had the heart to wake myself.

There was a woman in the first Mommy and Me yoga series I took part in who insisted that from the time he was six weeks old she could put her baby boy in his crib awake, say goodnight, and leave. She’d return twelve hours later to a smiling, happy, well-rested baby. Naptimes would be the same. She’d lay him down and two hours later she’d return to an agreeable, smily baby. The Fiendling was four weeks old at the time and her son was nine months. When the Fiendling was six weeks and started sleeping for six hour stretches I thought of her and her baby and assumed I was in the clear, that we’d officially hit what would become a lifetime of sleeping through the night. Now, six months later, I call bullshit. What baby does that all of the time? What baby is unaffected by teething, growth spurts, colds, developmental changes? I’ll bet she just closed the door and ignored the cries. Babies sleep through the night just fine if you can’t hear them crying.

People always talk about sleep schedules like they’re static. Who the fuck are these people who have these magical babies who just sleep through the night all the time? The Fiendling is a good baby and a good sleeper, but every few weeks he’ll hit a terrible stage where any 6,7,8 or 9 hour stretch of sleep is a laughable thing of the past. And it’s miserable and I freak out and I don’t know what to do, but then I read a book like the Wonder Weeks, or notice the tooth emerging from the surface, or read that babies often practice skills like crawling or walking in their sleep which keeps them up, and it occurs to me that I should just stop freaking out and accept that some weeks I’ll sleep through the night and be happy and well-rested and other weeks will have nights like last night- shitty.

So I’m done freaking out about sleep. I may be sleep-deprived and whiny on occasion, but I’m through having mini-nervous breakdowns about the Fiendling never sleeping through the night again. He’s a baby. Babies go through stages. Stages come to an end and new stages begin. He likes to sleep and so do I, so I know that each rough patch is just that, a rough patch that we’ll work through together. If he needs help falling asleep or cuddling through the night it’s fine. I’m his mom and that’s what moms do. Except for that bitch in yoga. She was either a liar or had a house full of white noise machines.