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The wonderful joys of parenthood and the long hard road to sleep…

The biggest surprise of parenthood for me was that baby sleep is non linear.

At six weeks old I started work on a bedtime routine for Rafferty involving a bath, a story, a cuddle and then bed. Within a couple of weeks I could get him down to sleep with only minimal fuss and I actually congratulated myself on a job well done and considered my baby sleep trained.

He even got down to two wake ups a night at about the three month mark – again, I smugly boasted about this to my mothers’ group.

Then teeth came and everything went back out the window. Rafferty would scream for an hour before falling asleep whimpering to himself with a cold teething ring in his mouth. Once he recovered from that I had my nice little sleeper back – for a couple of weeks.

At six months we went through a mega growth spurt and never more than two or three consecutive hours’ of sleep for weeks. I was dragging myself through the days with my eyes hanging out of my head for days on end.

While he is sleeping for longer periods at night now, one thing I have never been able to master is a regular naptime. My kid will sleep when he wants to sleep and there is truly no point attempting to put him down at the same time every day if he’s not in the mood for a nap. I figured out just to read his sleepy signs, and even then it doesn’t mean he’s going to actually nod off. I’ve watched him take five second microsleeps only to pop up and be ready to play until the sun goes down.

I really truly believe before I was a mother that babies just got gradually better at sleeping as time progressed. How wrong I was.

At the moment he has absolute spidey senses for when I leave the room. Does this happen to you? You finally finally get bub to sleep by rubbing his little tummy, he’s breathing deeply so you ever so gently take your hand away, slide it out of the crib, stand up slowly, lift one foot, then the other as you back towards the door in slow motion along the carpet (who knew feet on carpet could make so much noise?), then when you get to the door you softly, softly open it and squeeeeze through so as not to let any light in and just when you think you’ve made it – “WAAAAAAAAH!! WAAAAHHH!” and it’s back to square one.

Who here wins the prize for having the world’s worst sleeper?

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  • Oh boy this has me nervous for the future haha. At 3 months my little guy is doing pretty well. Usually only one wake up to change and feed. Trying now to change what he relies on to fall asleep. Not looking forward to teething one-day!

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  • sometimes it does take ages to be able to creep back out the door once you have got them into their bed. also sometimes you can drop something and it is so loud and that doesn’t disturb them but if you creak a floorboard, their eyes fling wide open lol oh the joy! they look so peaceful and cute when they do actually get to sleep though

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  • my bub will never sleep for more than 1 hour and when trying to put him to sleep he will fight it for more than 6 hours. He’s 6 months now and I am like a zombie. He is still reaching all his milestones and is a very smart little bubba I just hope he sleeps oneday.

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  • Isn’t funny just when we think we’ve got them trained they go and change again.

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  • one of my kids was an awful sleeper, thankfully she got better with time…but only better not best. also my other two kids are great sleepers…Bliss

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  • Well done mummy you did well my little man slept in 20 min blocks for over a month at night and barely slept at day time it has just corrected its self now

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  • it is so up and down to. they sleep and then they don’t because of teething and it goes on like that!

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  • Thanks for sharing this!

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  • Mine started going all night at about 5 months.. Oh the joys!!

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  • I think we all go through this stage of losing sleep with our little ones

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  • Great article. Thanks for sharing

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  • mine would wake every hour

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  • thanks for sharing was a good read

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  • That’s some great and helpful advice – thanks for sharing!

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  • I have forgotten what a good night sleep is like.

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