When I share with others how sleep deprived I am, I typically hear one of several comments:
“Nap when the baby naps!”
I like the sound of that in theory, but in practice, it’s tough for me. I’m a late night girl. Since we were displaced in September and Roya started waking three times a night again, I’ve tried to move my bedtime from 12:30am to 11pm. That’s helped a little. But, if I take more than a catnap in the afternoon, I can’t go to sleep before midnight.
“You and The Man should take turns feeding Roya.”
We do, but since I’m such a light sleeper (aren’t most moms?), I wake up from the slightest noise. If Roya needs to be fed, I have to wake The Man up so that he can feed her. That’s better than if I was doing it myself, but it still disrupts my sleep.
“You should give Roya more solids!”
We started Roya on solids at six months, as our pediatrician instructed. With the exception of sweet potatoes, she wasn’t a fan of the other starter baby foods. Then, only two weeks after we began feeding her solids, Roya ended up with more than a week of low-grade fevers following the flu shot. Her first cold and two viruses followed that with fevers ranging from 100-104.1 degrees. Our pediatrician was understandably concerned about Roya getting dehydrated so we were told to just feed her from the bottle. The lack of solids for almost two months made her even less inclined to eat a lot of baby food, once we resumed doing so.
“Roya is nine months old! She should be sleeping through the night by now.”
Some babies sleep through the night early, and some don’t. There’s typically another sleep regression due to brain development between eight and ten months. And, 20-30% of babies at this age aren’t sleeping through the night.
Even in my sleep-deprived state, I continued to remind myself that Roya will eventually sleep through the night. I wondered, though, if the situation could improve at all. I remembered a company that I had contacted about baby nurses while I was recouping from my C-section. The three words in the name of the company were music to my ears…
It was time for a call, and hopefully, a change!
To be continued…
For those of you with children or childcare experience, how have you handle sleep deprivation and your baby’s sleep issues?