The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors

14

14. That is the number of times that my 2 year old has slept through the night. Ever. Yup, it is that bad. Some people have kids that sleep easily. You lay them down, and poof, they go to sleep. And, sleep until the morning. But, not mine. My little man is a certified Olympic sleep fighter.

My little man was premature (36 weeks 4 days) and ended up with jaundice. So, for the first few weeks, we had to fight to keep him awake to feed him. Then, we had about a month of pretty good sleeping (for a newborn). I even remember talking to the doctor and having her say that I might be the lucky parent of a child that will sleep through the night at an early age. HA! Then, around 3 months, the train went off the track. My little dude started showing symptoms of reflux. Reflux sucks. It sucks for the poor kiddo that is in constant pain whenever they lay down or, really, all time. It sucks for the parents that try to console a screaming child that is in horrible pain. It sucks for the mom that spends all her time nursing a child that just keeps spitting it all back up all over the floor. It. just. sucks. And, just when your kiddo should be starting to learn how to self-soothe, your child is learning that sleeping equals pain. Searing, horrible pain. So, yeah, we have sleep problems.

The funny thing is that when you have a child that doesn't sleep, you start doing some pretty funny things. Crazy things, that is. We held my little guy for the first year of his life for every single nap. And, we rocked him to sleep every single time. And, when rocking didn't work, we walked the stairs. Up and down for an hour. In the summer. And, the nights that we played the noise machine and the radio at the same time all night long (in our room) because we thought that might make him sleep better. The times we were scared to turn over in bed because it might wake him up and we just got him down after an hour of rocking. It was rough. We talked to the pediatrician, we read all the books we could get our hands on about sleep training, and even talked to a very famous sleep consultant. It was only when she recommended we seek out another sleep consultant that we realized just how screwed we were.

But, things have gotten way better. He can get himself to sleep for naps most of the time. And, when he isn't sick, he can get himself to sleep at night too. And, in general, he is only up once or maybe twice a night and I can nurse him right back to sleep. But, then we go through a rough patch (like now) and it makes you just want to cry. My little man caught a virus and we are currently going on 10 nights of being up at least 3 times. Some of those nights, he is up for 2 hour stretches before I can get him back to sleep. One such night, he was up 8 times. So, yeah, I am tired. He is tired. We are all just tired.

It is worth it. So, very worth it. But, man, throw me a bone every once in awhile! Waiting for number 15....