Good Night...or maybe not.

I never realized how much I love sleep until I became a parent.  Sleep is wonderful and all too often it is a under-appreciated commodity for many people.  Up until Evie was born, I was one of those people.  I didn’t mind staying up late and only getting a few hours of sleep because I could sleep in or catch up on sleep the next night.  But that’s not the case now.  I’ve been blessed with a baby that isn’t a good sleeper.  We have a good bedtime routine each night – bath, books, bottle or nurse and bed.  She goes right to sleep.  But she simply cannot sleep through the night at this point.  On a good night she’s up once around 3; on a bad night, it could be 5-6 times.  She can fall asleep easily and anywhere.  It’s staying asleep where we are having an issue.  I feel like we’ve tried everything, but nothing seems to work.  We’ve even tried letting her crying it out – something I’m not a huge fan of to tell you the truth.  She cried herself hoarse for 20 minutes, fell asleep for 15 and then started all over again.  It was awful for me and awful for her.  Neither of us got any sleep.  If I could stay home with her each day, maybe it would be different.  But I need to be up by 6:15 to get ready for work so I usually give up and put her in bed with me.  There are a lot of people out there who have cautioned me about this and I feel a little bit guilty each time I do it.  I feel like I’m going to screw her up or something and I want so much to do what’s best for Evie.  But eventually I tell myself that if I don’t get some sleep, I’m going to be grouchy, tired, stressed and ultimately a short-tempered, impatient parent.  Being this way is definitely not what is best for for Evelyn.  Evie is picking up so much these days in terms of language and behavior, and she is starting to mimic and model it.  I want to teach her proper behavior, and it hard to do that if I’m exhausted.  I hope that Evie learns to sleep through the night soon, but until then, we will just take it one day at time and I will repeat a prayer that my mom always encouraged me to pray:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.