My daughter is 11 months old next week and has yet to sleep a full night.
When you meet people and tell them you have a baby, “are they sleeping through yet” always seems to be in the first few questions they ask, usually after “is it a boy or a girl”. When I tell people that she still wakes several times a night at 10 months, you can just feel the judgment happening.
- “Have you tried sleep training”
- “Don’t you let her cry it out?”
- “Is you wife breast feeding or bottle feeding”
- “Does she sleep too much in the day”
- “Is she getting enough calories in her daytime meals?”
The impact on our lives has of having a baby has, of course, been huge. But having almost a full year where a good night’s sleep at home is a non-event is very disruptive.
Somehow I managed a job move mid-way during this year, and took on a greater level of responsibility at work. But very often the daily grind and ever increasing list of to-do’s can seem much more stressful when you haven’t had a restful night. The only full nights of sleep I have had this year have been during the total of two weeks I have spent on business trips.
My wife is very good at offering me the chance to sleep in the spare room when I need to, but in a two bed apartment it is hard to get away from the crying. (Contrary to the popular myth spread by the ante-natal classes, not all dads sleep through baby’s crying).
As for my wife well, she simply has not had a full night’s sleep, or more than a very occasional 4 or 5 hour stretch this year. Period. When will there be light at the end of the tunnel?
We’ve had partial successes along the way, in particular using the techniques described in The Baby Whisperer
We’ll definitely use some of the techniques we learned for our next baby. The problem is our daughter outgrew the techniques that worked 6 months ago and moved into a new phase of development (this seems to happen every 4 to 6 weeks in the first year. Add to that the fact that she is so much heavier now – pat/shush would be unworkable!
Last night we did seem to have a breakthrough of some sorts. I insisted my wife didn’t feed her immediately before sleep. Instead she was fed, I bathed her and read her the usual bedtime story and put her in the cot after a few minutes of rocking. She roared and cried and I went back in and picked her up after five minutes until she calmed. Put her back in and she cried again but after three minutes more she was asleep!
Will let you know if this works again tonight. Couple of things I can definitely share from the last ten months of experience:
1. Dads will usually be willing to push further past the comfort zone on crying it out/leaving baby to settle themselves than Mum. The key to maintaining a good relationship is understand this is the case and try to meet a compromise
2. In general babies seem to sleep for a longer stretch when they get themselves to sleep, so any “prop” – breast, rocking, singing, holding – might yield immediate results but will not teach them how to get to sleep
3. Babies never sleep through the night – don’t lose hope however, this is merely the same for all humans – babies, children and adults. The key is that as adults we wake up and get ourselves back to sleep – and in the long term that is what you are aiming to do with baby
4. All babies are different – people forget this point as they give advice on how easy it was to sleep train their own child. Babies, like adults, are completely unique and you will need to be flexible with your baby and very very patient
Should you need to read something more to feel a bit better about your own circumstances with baby and sleeping, spare a thought for the parents of Britain’s youngest insomniac.
If you have some experiences you want to share please use the comments box to do so.
