Comments | dustthouart: sleep, the obsession of early parenting

dustthouart

sleep, the obsession of early parenting

Oct 19, 2013 12:45

Last night Mary-Alice slept through the night (according to the semi-medical definition, which is to sleep from midnight to 5am). Specifically she slept from just after 11pm until about 5:45am. Unfortunately I didn't sleep all that time because I had too much milk and it hurt ( Read more... )

it's a jolly holiday with mary-alice

Comments 4

anonymous October 21 2013, 00:50:41 UTC

I can't even think about my future in terms of sleep. I really, really hope that I'm able to get all three napping at the same time--I follow one gal's blog who has four under four and gets them all the nap simultaneously so I know it's possible ... but oh goodness. And nighttime. Oh dear.

I've been suffering from some pretty bad insomnia lately but I'm not complaining because I get to stay in bed all night at least. :)

Rosemary

dustthouart October 21 2013, 05:45:25 UTC

I think the most sanity-helping thing is, it's possible, but it may not be possible for you. This is "do what I say, not what I do" though, because I'm always thinking "X is able to do Y with her kids, why can't I do it?" I think the big challenge is that these differences aren't visible. We don't expect a tall, long-limbed person to be a great gymnast, and we don't expect a short, short-limbed person to be a great swimmer. But we don't have anything visual that can tell us "hey, this child is going to have difficulty conforming to our culture's sleep routines". We should keep in mind also that different cultures have different sleep expectations. Some "bad sleepers" in one culture might be "great sleepers" in another culture.

ext_708786 October 21 2013, 05:04:10 UTC

I'm not intending to brag here, but both our kids slept through the night pretty young. Not sure if it's just luck, or what. We were big on the whole "5 S's" thing, though: tight swaddle, pacifier in the mouth, and white noise machine in the crib. Those things really helped.

dustthouart October 21 2013, 05:35:46 UTC

Mary-Alice took longer to fall asleep, and wouldn't stay asleep as long, if she were swaddled. After trying four or five times, I was like "This is dumb. She doesn't like it. What am I doing?" I really expected her to like it because she seems so docile and phlegmatic, I thought she'd like being held tightly... most of the time when I hear about kids who hated being swaddled, they're exuberant free spirits (like Pippa... who loved being swaddled ( ... )