Sleep

Sleep - it's the thing foremost on most parent's minds. Everyone asks about it, everyone worries about it. Even our neighbor talks about it. Her 4 1/2 month old slept from 8pm-8am the other day. Straight through. In a row. I wouldn't believe her except that I've seen the kid and I've seen him sleep. He's a big kid and he does things in a big, mellow way. But even our neighbor talks about sleep.

The big question seems to be "Is she sleeping through the night?" This is a difficult question for me. She sleeps at night. She sleeps most of the night. But through the night? It depends. It depends firstly on how you define "through" and secondly on what night you're talking about.

According to my current sleep book ("The No-Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantly) sleeping "through the night" really means sleeping 5 hours in a row. Pop quiz: how many of you consider this a night of sleep? Right. Neither do I. But according to a local postpartum depression specialist, 5 is the magic number of hours for a mom to sleep in order to keep her sanity. I'll bet every mom reading this can agree that life got much better when their baby/babies slept 5 hours in a row.

So, how's Molly doing with the sleep thing? Well, as I mentioned before, she sleeps pretty consistently at night. That is, she is very difficult to get to sleep, but once she's asleep she usually has only very brief wakings after that. Wet diapers don't seem to bother her, so typically she just wakes for a brief nursing, then goes right back to sleep. The side-lying nursing thing makes this very easy - we half wake, nurse, then go back to sleep. And on some blessed nights she stays asleep for about 4-5 hours in the middle of the night. But other nights she wakes every 2 hours for a nursing. And nights like last night she gets gassy and is in a state somewhere between asleep and awake for hours, eyes firmly shut, but tossing, turning, and moaning and generally keeping me awake. These are the nights/mornings that I put her in the crib, put in my ear plugs, and turn on the white noise thingy (it's really just the little device that came with the Pack'N'Play, but the portability means that I can put it by me to drown out her noises or by her to drown out the rest of the house noises).

And, as I've heard from many moms, and as the sleep book reaffirms, her nights reflect her days: on the days that we get solid 2-hour naps the evenings are always better. Here's to trying to make those naps happen! (and here's to trying to get some sleep). Now I'm off to tend the little sleeper ... g'night.