Zzzzzz.....

Before I had a baby, it didn’t faze me much if I had a sleepless night.  I’d endured plenty of all-nighters during college studying and writing papers without issue.  I’ve stayed out until the wee hours of the morning, knowing that I had to get up early the next day, but I could do it easily.  I’d often wake up at 3:00 am while I was pregnant, unable to fall back asleep, but I would show up at work the next day without a problem.  Then Evelyn came along.  And I realized that I had no idea what sleep deprivation really was.

Evie is a good baby, truly she is.  She will sleep just fine as long as some is holding her.   It’s sleeping her bed where we’ve been having issues.  She was doing really well and could sleep through the night most of the time.  However, about a month and a half ago, we started putting Evelyn in her own room, in her crib, at night.  I didn’t want to do this.  I liked having her next to me, liked seeing her little chest rise up and down, liked hearing her soft sleep noises.  But it was time.  Little noises were starting to make her stir, and Pat and I were almost afraid to even whisper good night to each other for fear of disturbing her slumber.  So she turned four months and into her crib she went.  The first few nights went well – at least for Evie.  Her 4 months shots hit her hard and at night she slept 6-7 hours at a time, waking only briefly when she wanted her pacifier.  I, however, had a much harder time with this transition that she did.  I kept the video monitor on the pillow next to my head (neurotic, I know) and slept so lightly that every little noise sent me flying into her room to make sure she was still alive.  One night, I crept into her room to check on her before I went to bed and panicked because I didn’t see her chest rising.  I grabbed her out of bed, shouting her name – only to realize that she was fine when she groggily opened her eyes and stared/glared at me.  Poor little thing was probably thinking “Holy cow Mom – what is your problem!”  

A week or so past, and I started to adjust.  The monitor was moved to the night stand, I didn’t jump up at every sound, and I started to enjoy the extra sleep I was getting.  Evelyn, however, started to wake up multiple times a night.  Sometimes she would fall easily back to sleep, other times she would be wide awake and want to be held. 

However, unlike Evelyn, I couldn’t make up for the lack of sleep by taking naps during the day.  The lack of any decent sleep started to get to me, especially since she continued to wake up 2-3 times a night between the hours of 10pm-6am, for almost a month.  I was moody and irritable.  I would burst into tears every morning when I had to leave Evie, and cry most of the way to work.  I would forget things if they weren’t written down and make silly mistakes.  I was clumsy and had bruises because I was continually bumping into things.  I would flip out over the most trivial of things and had no patience whatsoever.  In short, I was royal mess.

 And then, just went I thought I could take no more, she slept 6 hours straight.  When I woke up that morning and realized that I had FINALLY gotten some good sleep, I was gleeful.  I practically skipped to her room when she awoke and was greeted with her cherubic little grin.  When she did it again the next night, I was elated.  My equilibrium started to return, my energy was up and I just felt SO MUCH BETTER.  Three nights of sleep, and I felt like a new woman.  We've now had about two weeks of sleeping through the night and I feel like doing a happy dance.  I’m under no illusion that she will continue to do this.  One thing I’ve learned from being a parent, it’s that as soon as you get used to something, it changes.  But until it does, I will enjoy every blissful moment of sleep I can get.