Anatomy of a Sleepless Night

The first question you're asked when you bring home a baby is 'is she sleeping?' Usually there is no easy answer. 'Yes' the baby sleeps when it suits her. 'No' it's not what you, person-without-child-living-under-your-roof, would consider sleep. Now that is not to say that babies don't sleep. I have friends whose kids were natural sleepers, right out of the womb. I can count them on the hand of someone who uses a power saw for a living. But they do exist. They are adorable kids. I would like to borrow one.

Suffice it to say, Charlotte is not one of them. We had high hope when she was born that she would be one of those good sleepers. Unlike her brother, she took to her bassinet right off. She could sleep without being cradled. And she slept for hours at a clip. For months. See rested family with blissfully sleeping infant atop this post. Then along came winter cold season, and mom and dad got sick too and sleep became a premium for health and we succumbed to lazy sleep habits in relationship to the baby. If she cried in the middle of the night, hungry or not, we gave her a bottle instead of allowing her a chance to learn to self-soothe, a vital tool in the fight for good sleep habits. So now the bottle is part of her routine, so much so that she wakes every hour, during periods of light sleep, in search of a nipple, flesh or plastic, makes no difference. She sucks, she drinks a sip or two, she falls blissfully to sleep for another hour. Without it, she will cry, piteously, for an hour. So you see our growing dilemma. A five-month-old who weights 16 pounds should not be up every hour snacking.

Now, with her habits devolving further and our selfish crave for sleep having been totally thwarted, we have begun our second attempt at...what should I call it?....sleep conditioning. For those of you who think this is some inhumane sleep ritual devoid of love or compassion, I will respectfully disagree. Dr. Sears (the modern-day, granola-version of Benjamin Spock) might suggest we take a less structured approach -- he would also advise us 'hey, your kid will sleep one day'...who cares if he's four when y'all finally get some shut-eye. That's nearly a direct quote from his 'Baby book, an otherwise useful tool. But that is just not practical for our two kids of varied age under two -- unless you're volunteering to be our night nanny. This approach, I will note, worked really well with Harry, who was sleeping through the night after three days under the Ferber method, author of "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems." Will it work for Charlie? We'll see!

So, you ask, how did she do last night? I will not humor you with the stock answer. (Spoiler alert -- if you're pregnant with your second and wondering how you'll cope...perhaps you should read a different blog until I give the all-clear).

7 p.m. Charlotte falls asleep in my lap after her last bottle. I put her in the bassinet. She stirs, cries, but falls to sleep quickly.

10 p.m. I move Charlotte to her nursery, into her crib. She wakes and cries. I begin the process of soothing every few minutes. I make up a bed on the floor of her room and go to sleep.

10:30 to midnight. Charlotte wakes every 20 minutes. I soothe her back to sleep each time, waiting one minute, three minutes, five minutes and 10 mintutes intervals.

Midnight -- Charlotte wakes in earnest for food. She gobbles down 4 ounces of formula and begins the process of crying herself to sleep back in her crib. Again we being interval soothing. She's out by 12:30.

2:30 a.m. -- She's up again and Leef calls in the swing shift. Dad takes over.

2:30 to 6:30 a.m. -- Paul says Charlotte wakes every half hour but is already responding to light soothing and falls back to sleep quickly.

What will tonight hold? Stay tuned for another riveting chapter of The House That Never Sleeps.