It’s hard not to compare your kids when you have more than one.
Especially with Caitlin already not needing overnight feeds early in her life / early in our new parenting roles; I think it was even around 6 months that she started sleeping through the night. The other things would also be when she started walking, and when she was toilet trained.
Little Man Caleb still wakes (with a wail, no less) in the middle of the night, with each parent pretending not to hear it waiting for the other to get outta bed, or dreading that it is our turn to feed….
So us parents, and to an extent Caitlin (yes she still sleeps with us due to space constraints) are usually panda-eyed, dozing off at work and in school…. where opportunities for sleep is cherished and which means a trade-off for any other (nocturnal??) activities… such as regular exercise – a topic which deserves a whole different series of posts.
HM (Hot Mummee or of late, Her Majesty!) suggested recently that when Caleb does wake and cries, to lull him back to sleep quickly, before he “fully” wakes wide-eyed.
This is, of course, depended on him being “more tired / tired enough” than his actual (presumed reason for waking) hunger. We OH SO SINCERELY hope that this will work, and work enough times for him to get used to not feeding at nights, eventually leading to him getting used to not waking anymore.
We have tried this two nights in a row, with my turn being only last night / this morning.
He woke wa-waa-WAAAA and HM was almost-violently shaking my leg. I got up, mumbled something, and picked him up to immediately cuddle him. In the dark I could see (through my squinty lack of sleep eyes) that his eyes weren’t squinty. The little terror was looking around.
Assuming my usual stance, I was bouncing and swaying him (think golf-swing hip-movements) for quite a while. I almost gave up seeing as he was wriggling a little; a sign that he really isn’t all that sleepy. And I was actually working up a sweat already.
Lucky for me (him?) that he did eventually knock off. Put him back in the cot and he started stirring and actually propped himself looking up. Fearing the worst (!) I managed to pat him back to sleep though- did this a few times.
This morning I got out of the shower to find HM feeding him. She had prepared his milk already, presumably he was wa-waa-ing when I was in the shower. She remarked that his cot is a little wet with pee….
So what’s the take-away with this exercise?
That this may actually work, but at the same time we have to decide whether to check and change his diapers, risking fully-waking him in the process of washing / changing him.
Hope this is a workable tip shared here.
