Baby Tipping Part Three

Nighttime doesn't have to be difficult, but you will have to endure some rough patches. Claire and I spent the first few weeks handing off to each other at night. Claire would feed, and I'd look after diapering. It was still exhausting, but at least we could get decent naps at night.

For the most part, it worked well, but there was a run of five or six nights in a row when Ada was three or four weeks old where Ada would refuse to go to sleep, crying and complaining and fighting every attempt to get her to sleep, and then wake constantly through the night. We were exhausted, frustrated and stressed. But it passed, and we got through it together.

Just remember the old Persian adage, "This too shall pass". Let the hard times come, and constantly remind each other that it's just a phase, and it won't last. Be there for each other. And take video documentation of it to use as evidence and guilt trips for the next eighteen years, at least!

Ada actually got into a really nice routine for a few weeks where she was asleep by 10:30, and would sleep until 7am, waking once around 5am for a quick feed. But ever since we went home to Ireland in August, she's been causing Claire nothing but pain some nights, waking every other hour. I don't know if it's just that she needs to eat more, or that she's just a light sleeper, but Claire sometimes gets a very restless night, resulting in a tired mommy for the following day. When I can, I'll take Ada out of the room and let Claire get a few solid hours sleep, but during the week, I leave for work by 7:30 or 8am, so I do my best at the weekend.

Daytime naps can be tricky, with lots still going on around thhe sleeping beast. My advice would be, when they're young, let your little bundle sleep in the living room, with all the noise that that includes, and don't be quiet while they sleep. We had Ada in the living room constantly apart from at night during the first five or six months. She's slept through Pacific Rim at just a few weeks. She can, literally, sleep through an explosion in the same room! And that's wonderful for when friends call over. We've never had to say "SHHHHH!! The baby's asleep". It also helps when we're in town. Ada can sleep on noisy buses, at busy resturants, or walking through a crowded mall.

At a certain point, that needs to change though. Around six months, Ada was too intereested in everything around her to sleep for long in the living room. She would wake up and refuse to go back to sleep after only a short nap, so we moved her back to sleeping in the bedroom even during the day. We still don't enforce silence while she's sleeping, but we do close the door a little. She sleeps much better that way. We also leave a bedside light on, so she can play with her stuffie when she wakes up. Sometimes she'll just cry for us right away, but more than once we've found her babbling to her stuffie, content and happy to be by herself for a while.

Too cute.