is she sleeping through the night?

We keep getting this question from people and I'm like...um....what on earth do you mean? Are you speaking English? Are you on the same planet as we are? Do babies ever atually sleep through the night?

I'm feeling the need to explain our particular situation. Please do not take this as a vent or complaint - there is not really a place to "complain" about your own baby. It is what it is and you just kind of deal however you need to. It really is merely an explanation in response to the question in the title of this blog entry. I don't know if this is "normal" or "common" - I'm not trying to say that everyone experiences this or to scare the mommies to be. I really don't know what other people's nighttime routines are like. I honestly don't know if I had a grossly misled conception of what it would be like and now I know the truth, or if I just have a crazy baby.

Ok, so not only does she not sleep through the night. She does not, umm, go to bed at night. She is kind of UP all night. There is no such thing as "putting her down for the night." This does not happen. I can't even imagine how amazing it would be to set my baby in her co-sleeper or crib sometime between the hours of 8pm and midnight and have her sleep for more than 2 hours at a time. The only possible way to maybe possibly get her to do this would be to allow her to cry it out to the point that she would exhaust herself and pass out. This, 1. does not feel right to me and 2. would, according to many well-respected publications, mean that we might as well sever all ties to our child right here and now and be prepared to see her on Oprah in 20 years confiding in America about how selfish her parents were.

I always pictured sleeping, in bed, next to my husband, having gently placed our sweet little one in the co sleeper just a foot away from me, and then, maybe at 1am and again at 3 or 4am and maybe again at 6am hearing my baby cry and getting up to feed her and struggling to stay awake for 20 or 30 or 40 minutes or maybe even an hour to feed her. That seemed like that would suck a lot and I recall my middle of the night trips to the bathroom during pregnancy and thinking "oh, this is preparing me for when I have to get up at night with the little one." Nope. That is not how this particular situation is working out. Getting up out of my own bed 4 times a night would be no big deal. And if Kevin took care of one or two fo those waking up times, hey, that would be freakin' vacation, paradise and heaven rolled into a chocolate fudge sundae. Rather, here is how it goes:

Putting her in the cosleeper simply does not work. She will not sleep in it and if we place her in it while sleeping, she will wake up immediately. We have tried this on four seperate occasions and basically, since there is constant crying in our bedroom, neither person can sleep at all.

So, instead, here is what we do:

From about 8pm until about midnight, there is a variety of fussing, crying, screaming and sleeping, usually fussing being the most frequent and sleeping being the least freequent. Sleep MAY set in around 11pm. Kevin then heads upstairs to bed. I stay up, downstairs, armed with the moses basket, the Boppy, various bottles filled half with breastmilk and half with formula, a good book, some burp cloths, a binkie and a lot of late night tv. I try to prepare mentally to handle dealing with whatever combo of fussing, crying, screaming and sleeping (plus diaper changing and feeding) come my way until 4am. Now, she may sleep one or two hours during that time, in which case I lay near her (she is usually in her moses basket or sitting half-reclined in her Boppy) and half-sleep...fully expecting to be jarred awake by the previously mentioned screaming, fussing, etc. Sometimes I half-sleep with my finger inserted in the pacifier which is inserted in her mouth because otherwise it falls out and wakes her up.

At 4am - which I am often wide awake to greet - I change (and, if needed) feed her and then gently wake my equally sleep-deprived husband. I then sleep from 4am-8am when he leaves for work. Kevin may get her to sleep a little more until 5 or 5:30 or so...at which point she is usually very awake - so he holds her while he makes coffee and has his cereal and checks out online news, etc. Sometimes he can get her to sleep a little bit after a feeding. But generally, he has to hold her for most of this time...and then puts her in her car seat which he then takes into the bathroom with him while he showers, etc. So, Kevin usually gets about 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep plus one or one and a half hours of maybe-half-sleep. And I get 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep, plus 1-2 hours of maybe-half-sleep. I wonder how long it is possible to function like this. 17 days feels like a lot right now.