You only have to be pregnant for about two seconds with your first child before the sleep comments begin from well-meaning (or not) friends and strangers alike.
"Get your sleep now because you'll never sleep again!"
"I haven't had a good night's sleep in 18 years!"
Sadly, this fear-mongering about sleep is actually based in a great deal of truth based on my experiences during pregnancy (the insomnia seemed especially cruel during my second pregnancy when I knew the sleepless infant nights were coming soon but not yet actually happening) and of course in the early days of the infant-who-is-hungry-all-night-long. But Josh and I have been very very lucky in the sleep department. Both of our kids have found their sleep rhythm sometime in the second part of the first year and there are many nights when we enjoy a solid 12-13 hours of kid-free quiet in our house. These days, Dash's little brain is growing so fast that he can sleep 13-14 hours without a peep. Lately, we are much more likely to hear from Ella in the middle of the night.
Her night wakings are generally because she needs something. Her pillow needs to be rearranged or she's lost a stuffed animal under the covers. Recently, Josh was called upstairs to Ella's room at 2 a.m. to find that what she wanted was a hug. When I heard the story in the morning, I thought this was adorable. He did not.
One thing that we have never done with our children is to sleep with them in our bed. Every parent out there knows this is a hot button issue and I'm not straying into any commentary here on whether it's a good or bad thing. I'm just stating, for the blogging record, that we have never co-slept with our kids. I suspect this is largely because our kids have been good sleepers in their own beds from the very beginning and we haven't wanted to rock the boat. Sleep is important, remember? You go with what works!
But I have always wanted to snuggle with my kids at night. I go into their rooms to kiss them before I go to bed and I just want to crawl in with them. So when Josh was out of town a month ago and Ella woke up about 12:30 a.m., I decided to take the plunge. I asked her if she wanted to come get in my bed.
And so the sleeplessness began.
Part of the initial problem was that she was so excited to get to sleep in my bed that all she could do was sit up and grin at me every time I looked at her.
She wiggled around and around and around.
She rearranged all of the pillows multiple times.
She admonished me when I turned my back to her. "Mommy, I need to see your face!"
About 2:30 a.m. (neither of us had yet gone to sleep), she sat straight up and said "I'm going to get some books! Let's read!"
Finally we must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remember is waking up at 6 a.m. on the very edge of the bed with two bony little knees in my back. How can a 3-foot tall child take up my space in bed than my six-foot tall husband?? Annoyed, I drifted back to sleep, only to wake up a half hour later to a wide-awake girl smiling up at me. The night was clearly over.
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