Everyone warns you that you’ll never get any sleep once your little one comes. It’s true. The oddest thing happens – your definition of “sleeping through the night” changes drastically. I remember thinking how odd it was when people asked if my baby slept through the night.
Well, I put the baby down at 6:00 PM. Then he wakes up at 7:30 PM. Then he goes back to sleep at 8:00 PM. Then he wakes up at 9:00 PM. Then he wakes up at 11:00 PM. And so on, and so on… so you might consider that 3-hour stretch of straight sleep “sleeping through the night”. That period of uninterrupted sleep becomes so elusive that you will come to treasure it like the magic that it is!
“My baby slept through the night! From 11:30 PM to 4:30 AM!!” might just be cause for celebration! Or, unfortunately you might get used to only sleeping for 90 minutes at a time and wake up with insomnia (or moms that are breastfeeding might be woken up by their bodies needs!).
Sleeping is the one struggle that just about every parent has. There are so many methods to “deal” with sleep. When one works for you, you swear by it and recommend it to everyone. Crying it out, co-sleeping, or even getting a “sleep consultant”, in the end we all do what we need to do to get that precious sleep.
Don’t worry parents, that wonderful day will come when your little one will be able to turn on the TV themselves and get themselves some breakfast… it will be a long time coming but it will happen!