Mom Life: Sleep Diaries

I do truly look forward to the day when this “series” concludes… until then. An update… the continuation of our sleep diaries… Started Here… Progressed Here

A friend recently posted a link to this article, Sleep: A Misguided and Unhealthy Obsession that really resonated with the way I’ve been feeling about our family sleep situation lately.

After almost 2 weeks in California, and the obvious de-railers that come with traveling, getting back into a routine has been a difficult transition. In addition, we were all sick on vacation for at least 3-4 days each… overlapping to span basically the entire trip. Basically… our California Christmas was spent snuggling co-sleeping in a full-sized guest bed. Actually… most nights Daniel ended up on the couch… I guess Liv and I take up too much room.

So… where are we now? Co-sleeping? … Only Co-sleeping the half of the night that Olivia refuses to sleep in her crib. Nursing only once… Nursing as much and as frequent as Olivia wants… I can’t say that I really know. All I can say is… I’ve definitely started this series with the “If Momma Ain’t Happy” argument… and I’ve made it 180 degrees. My happiness or ability to be a good mother has little to do with the # of hours or consecutive hours of sleep I get. If I’m totally truthful… I’ve actually gotten pretty used to getting up in the middle of the night… nursing in the middle of the night. Going to bed early… waking up late. Occasionally I’ll even indulge in an afternoon nap with Olivia.

NOW… If we could just figure out how to get Olivia to stop being such a sleeping squirm worm… I think we’d all do just fine.

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Mom Life: Sleep Diaries

I admit I’ve dragged my feet with this long overdue update to our Sleep Diaries.

Almost 2 months ago, Daniel and I agreed that we needed to embrace some kind of sleep training. Obviously our ultimate goal of having a child who would sleep through the night (ideally 7:30 PM – 7:30 AM) in her own bed. The first few nights were rough… but really, it was nothing as bad as I expected. Not nearly as many tears as anticipated (hers or mine) and fairly successful after just a few nights…. AND THEN… An ear infection happened…. AND THEN… A fever/cough/cold/snotty mess happened…. AND THEN…. more teething…. and it seemed like all that hard work all that tearful training was for nothing. We were back at square one.

Fast Forward to present. For the past few weeks, Olivia and I have both been fighting a bit of a cough/cold…  VERY mild symptoms (luckily) but caused an unfortunate dip in my milk supply… READ: results in attempting to nurse as often as humanly possible… even in the overnight hours to help increase production… thus causing our most recent set-back with sleep training. And we arrive at today… Recovering supply. Happy baby. Tooth #6 completely popped. Cough/Cold almost crushed… and ready to get some good sleep… All to be thrown by a 2 hour time change in less than a week when we fly to California for Christmas.

Lately it feels like it’s ALWAYS going to be something… Although sometimes most of the time I envy my friends who have babies who have been sleeping through the night since they were 6-weeks old… I’ve come to terms with the fact that my precious baby girl… is just NOT an excellent sleeper… and I’m OK with that.

Just a note. Tonight, Olivia crashed while nursing around 8, woke up at 11:45 PM (I nursed her back to sleep)… and almost 2 hours of pump/shop/blogging… I’m still awake. Maybe Momma has sleep issues too?

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