STTN- sleeping through the night. I didn’t really know what these letters stood for until recently when my friend Jessica told me about it. Makes sense that I didn’t know what it meant because it does not happen in our house anymore – sleeping through the night. The Bun is 9 months old and is not showing any signs of wanting to sttn.
This is how our nights play out-
7:30- 8pm: We finish up bathtime, bottle and other bedtime routines and The Bun and I settle into our rocking chair and I sing and rock him to sleep. He is actually really good about going down fairly easily, he knows his cues and doesn’t fight me like he once did.
8:15pm- He is out and I have transferred him into his crib.
9:00- For the past two days he has woken up and I have had to go back to the nursery and soothe and pat him back to sleep. Its not too bad but I still wish he hadn’t added this into the mix
11:00-12- He wakes up for his first bottle and he usually drinks that next to me or J in our bed. Doing this in bed just transferred over from our breastfeeding days. Some night he doesn’t even drink an ounce and just settles in comfortably b/w us. Some nights he genuinely is hungry.
12:30am- If I’m not too tired and haven’t already passed out, I take him back to his crib. This has happened less frequently since J wasn’t here and our routines were a little different
4-5am- He wakes up for his second bottle and after this one J and I let him sleep with us until its time to wake up
7:30 am or earlier- He is up and ready and rested and super excited to start his day.
Now I get it that there are a lot of traditionalists who think he shouldn’t be in our bed to begin with , but we like sleeping with him and this partial cosleeping where he spends the first part of the night in his crib and the second part in ours works for us and for a while it was perfect where he would only wake up for the 2:30 am bottle and then settle in next to us. But lately even if we let him sleep next to us all night, he still wakes up during those times.
90% of the time, I’m okay with how things are- He is only a baby once and I’m okay that he needs me to help him go back to sleep. In fact some nights , I simply adore cuddling him and dozing off to sleep together. I’m definitely more in the Attachment Parenting camp , so I absolutely refuse to let him cry it out, I tried it for two nights and it was horrible for all of us. I have seen it work wonders for a lot of my friends babies but its just not for us.
But like all new mothers his not sleeping through the night really makes me doubt myself, Is it me? Are all the mothers who have “ferberized” or “sleep trained” and had great results really better mothers? Am I just doing something wrong? I must be if my child refuses to sleep. Worse, I worry that something is wrong with the Bun, that these are just early symptoms of some horrible disorder/disease and if only I can do something about it now, disaster will be averted. I’m always deeply aware that things could always be worse- being mother makes me acutely aware of the infinite dangers and frailties of human life but I’m still consumed by this one worry.
At this point I don’t even need him to not wake up during the night, I just wish he’d go back to the good old days where he woke up only once. Since I’m eternally optimistic , every night before bed I turn to J and say “Tonight’s the night, he’s going to do it , I can feel it in my bones.”
So, here I am typing this in bed, 12 am saying “Tonight’s the night, he’s going to do it, I can feel it in my bones.”
Orange You Grape 