Sleep. I Love You But You Suck.

If one more person asks me if he's sleeping through the night yet I might just lose my mind. It goes from "Are you going to have an epidural" to "Are you going to breastfeed" to "Is he sleeping through the night?"

Seriously, when did my crotch, boobs, and baby's sleep suddenly become EVERYONE'S business?

And so, I usually just say "yes." That's what I tell all new mother's to say. Just say "yes." Because if you say "no" then you know what happens.

The book recommendations come flying, the tales of great babies and bad babies and silly babies and babies who wouldn't sleep until they were in college come shooting out of people's mouths. And then you freak out because you think they should be sleeping through the night but they're not and so you must be doing something wrong.

Damn us mothers. We're always doing something wrong.

And then it gets to questioning where your baby is sleeping *gasp* IN YOUR BED? And if you put them down for naps and you better put them down for naps because they'll be spoiled and they'll never sleep. EVER. 

And so I wonder. How many babies at 3 months old are actually sleeping through the night? Through the night being 5 hours in a row, mind you. And add breastfed babies to that. How many breastfed babies are sleeping that long and how many breastfeeding moms actually keep track? I mean, do you look at the clock when you whip your boob out at some-God-awful morning hour?

And can people ask anymore ridiculous questions? Seriously. Can they not think about anything else to ask? You know, like how are you holding up and are you doing okay and do you need anything and would you like another ding dong and coke?

C'mon. Help a mommy out people! No self-loving mother wants to talk about sleep.

We're not getting any. Either is our baby. ENOUGH.

And, as I bounce on a large exercise ball with my baby in the sling, what's the craziest thing you had to do to get your kids to nap/sleep?

Comments

[Tracy]

Amanda is 7 weeks old today and last night she slept for 7 1/2 hours straight. For about a week or so she has been giving me about 5 to 5 1/2 hours. I guess I'm truly blessed from the sounds of the other mother's responses.

[Pamela]

I don't think people ask if your baby is sleeping through the night to be nosey--it's their way of starting a conversation. Now, if they ask if you circumcised your boy, then they're being nosey!

[KRISTAN]

Well I have been having problems with this exact subject. However he was a awesome infant and now that he is a year old he does not sleep through the night at ALL unless he is in the same bed as me. There are times that he wont sleep all night even with me. I am a single mom and I am currently in a relationship. As much as my son comes first I am having a hard time with this issue. My boyfriend is understanding about the subject but I know it really frusterating for him.. I have tried I think darn near every thing...We are moving now (FINALLY) so my son will have his crib set up in his own room. He is bottle fed and it is so tempting at times to just give him the bottle at night because I am so tired! If there are anything that anyof you can help with it would be SOOO AWESOME if you could send some advice my way! It would be greatly appreciated!! As for the personal questions I FELT TOTALLY THE SAME!!!

[Holly]

Funny enough, my son (first child) slept through the night around 6 months or so. He was formula/bottle fed from 1-month-old and on. My baby girl is 4-months-old and has been sleeping through the night (5-11 hours at a time) since her first week home. She is exclusively breastfed. Now, she NEVER wants to sleep in the daytime, but she sleeps well at night (barring teething, etc.). So, the whole formula vs. breastfeeding thing didn't go as folks said it would with the sleeping through the night. My kids were totally opposite ... kids are just different and will sleep through the night when they're ready! Amen to getting asked WAY too personal questions when your pregnant/a mom ... it's CRAZY!

[Donna]

After reading this article I felt I needed to chime in. The ridiculous questions that you get are insane!!! My daughter is almost 6 months old. She will be on the 11th of May. The questions I always get about her are the sleeping and how much does she weigh. Well I have a question... Does it really matter to anyone else besides mommy, daddy and the doctor? I'm serious! Kelley is a preemie. She was born 7 weeks early and weighed 3 lbs 10 oz and she is a primarily breastfed baby with formual when I'm working. I always tell my in-laws who babysit her twice a week that I'm not a cow and can't pump out milk at will.
So here it is on the sleeping issue for my daughter. She starting sleeping through the night when she turned about 3 months old. How do I know this??? Well I have a "baby's first calendar" and I would write down what time she fell asleep and then in the morning wrote down her wake up time. I did this also because Kelley's doctor always asked these questions. But for gods sake why the hell does anyone else need to know these things.

[yogapantz]

I'm prolly gonna get stuff thrown at me, but both my babies were sleeping through the night at six weeks. I had to wake them up to feed. They still are both early to bed/early to rise, though, so I never get to sleep in. They're also good eaters! They eat pretty much anything. I'm going to duck now.

[Lina]

I guess I was also lucky #1 slept through the night when I brought her home from the hospital, she was 1 week old. #2 slept through the night at 3 months. Of course I have to say this has been easy for me with living with my grandma. I hope she is still here when we have our next one, not for a few years though.

[mel]

I'm late coming into this one, as usual, but...
I always hated that question. What is it that sleeping through the night is supposed to signify? Intelligence? Maturity? My baby is better than yours? What?
My son slept through the night at 2 weeks old. No kidding. He was born 11 lb. 3 oz. He was just able to make it without needing to eat as often, I guess. But who freaking cares, because he pretty much has never slept since....and he is 9 years old. How quickly he first slept through the night was not indicative of a whole heck of a lot, now was it? :)Still, I don't find that question as obnoxious as asking a pregnant woman if the baby was planned. Grrr.

[Michele]

The only way I could get #1 to sleep was by putting him in his car seat. I would put the car seat right in his crib and have him sleep in it. I dunno, he liked being at an incline or being cozy, or something. Anyway, he was a huge baby so he outgrew that thing really quick and I finally had to take him out of it when he was so big his arms were wedged in on the sides and his legs were dangling over the end. He didn't sleep through the night until 13 months.

[Much More Than A Mom]

Our son slept through the night from 8 weeks to 5 months and has been up pretty much every 3-4 hours since. Sometimes 45 minutes. Love the teething.

I've driven to neighbouring cities trying to get him to fall asleep, slings rock, walked until I had blisters...you name it. I'll sleep when he moves out. Oh wait - then I'll just be worrying about him, right?

[Damselfly]

This is so funny because I was going to blog about this myself! When our *postal carrier* asked if our boy was sleeping better, I came to the same conclusion: tell everyone that everything is just going great, and our boy is nothing short of a perfect angel baby. And the husband must do the same, or suffer the consequences!

[Cathy]

Baby No. 1: Did not sleep through the night until her first birthday. She also shunned bottles during the day because she preferred breastfeeding. All. Night. Long. I called her Norm, because she NEVER LEFT the damn bar.

Baby No. 2: Did not sleep through the night until he was 18 months old.

As soon as he finally did, I sampled Ambien. Ah, bliss...

[roxanne]

I breastfed both of my kids and neither one of them slept through the night until around 13 or 14 months. Each slept in the bed with me for 2 years. I stopped BF #1 around 10 months, hoping that it would encourage a full night's sleep, but it didn't work. It's total bullshit. so just breastfeed forever, cuz when he decides to sleep through the night he will. As far as him sleeping with you.... You are probably getting a much higher quality of sleep than you would if you had to get up and go to him to feed him. When he's in your bed you can just flop out a breast and doze in and out till he's done. People are just nosey and ignorant. 99% of the population that is

[Alicia]

I'm one of the lucky ones - Jordan is four months this week and slept through the night from the very beginning. Oh, how very lucky I am!

But you know what? I still get the same sort of comments. "What? He sleeps seven hours and then four more? And you're breastfeeding? Oh, no, there must be something wrong with him! There's a great book that says blah blah blah...."

I think no matter what the situation the assumption is that new mommies are doing something wrong. And random people get some sort of schadenfreud type pleasure in that.

[b]

The craziest thing my husband and I did (really just him) was when he moved out to the couch to "train" our second to sleep through the night. She was about 9 months old and the post-partum stuff was really taking a toll on our whole family, so he took her at night. He still picked her up, but since she was breastfeeding, she didn't smell me and would usually go back to sleep quickly. We also took away the paci at 6 mos because she woke up 9-12 times at night just for that! She ended up eating more during the day, but one week of hell finally taught her that night was for sleep. One month later, I was "cured". Interesting, no?

But with this one, I'll do things different b/c husband travels every week with work. I may just be emailing you for help in a few months...be nice to me!

[Jamie]

Ah... the not sleeping. And the advice about the not sleeping. My daughter did not sleep... ever. If I did manage for her to close her eyes, she would take a quick 15 minute cat nap and be ready to go a few more hours.

The first 8 months of our life together vacillated between miserable and ok. Lack of sleep colors a lot of memories, and if it wasn't for work I would lose any semblance of sanity. And listening to everyone say "My baby slept through the night from day 1!" Seriously, every single person I asked said their babies slept all night long.

A 7 months it was once a night waking (I switched to formula at 6 months because I *hated* pumping at work), and now, at 8 months, I can reliably put her down at 830-9 and she will be out until I take her to daycare at 6 am. I do hear her wake up sometimes, but she plays quietly until she falls back asleep.

We slept in the same bed until she was about 4 months old, and the only reason she moved was that we are both light sleepers. We kept each other awake, and the sleeping quality (not quantity) improved with separate beds. I wish I could sleep with her though, I'm a single parent and sleeping with the babe is comforting.

[Darlene]

Baby #1 slept the first nine months of his life on my chest, and because he was such a big baby I didn't sleep much while he was there. At 10 months he moved to his own bed, but he still wasn't a great sleeper. I know it was about then because I quickly became pregnant with baby #2. When baby #2 got here he did not sleep. For about a year I was getting by on less than 3 hrs of sleep each night and it sucked! But you do survive and it does get better. Right now baby #5 is 3 months old and some nights he will sleep from 8pm to 5 am and some nights he is up every 3 hours.

[Heather]

Kristen, how are you doing? Are you holding up ok? Would you like for me to ship you a box of ding-dongs and a six pack of coke? Because I will!

Neither of my kids slept thru the night at 3 months while bf'ing. Nope, didn't happen!

[Smiling Mom]

My sleep life didn't start getting really great until both of my kids reached 12 months. Add in a teething baby, snotty nose, or an extra nap and things still get screwed up.

[Christina]

Oh, Kristen, I understand. Cordy refused to sleep nearly anywhere except in the sling while bouncing on the exercise ball for most of the first four months. That exercise ball got a lot of use.

She didn't start sleeping longer stretches until she was 6 or 8 months old, and even then she was still waking once or twice a night until after a year old. And she was bottle fed!

[mayberry]

My kids were IN NO WAY sleeping through the night at 3 months (or 6, or 12 for that matter). The thing that pissed me off the most was the implication that they weren't sleeping because I was breastfeeding. SHUT UP.

[Kendra]

My daughter spent the first 3 months of life sleeping on my chest and would probably still be sleeping there if I hadn't gotten a kidney infection and been in the hospital for 2 days. She also wanted to be walked to sleep and I had to bounce while I walked. Even better was that I had to keep the motion going once she fell asleep until I was lying down. No one wants to see a post partum mom squatting until her butt is almost level with her knees and swinging her hips/knees from side to side with a baby in her arms in order to be able to lie down on the couch.

[Mrs. Chicken]

I had this experience with breastfeeding. Ummmm, how is that the business of my MOTHER'S REAL ESTATE AGENT?

You are right about this. People have no compunctions about asking the most intimate questions of mothers. And heaven forbid your answers differ from a) what is considered the norm now (as in breastfeeding) and b) their own opinions.

That said, I hope the baby's sleep and your needs start to jibe soon, for your sake. Hang in there. Remember, it doesn't last forever. :)

[Kelly]

For #1, the first 3 months of his life he was on a 1hr schedule for eating, and spent the entirety of his life on one of our chests either sleeping or eating, 24hrs a day. That? Yeah, that was fun. (*gag*)
#2 is compensating and I won't jinx what we've got going by mentioning how good/bad it is, however every night I bounce on the exercise ball for about an hour and a half, feeding and getting him into deep sleep. Did I mention he weighs 18lbs at 4mo? I know you, Kristen, can appreciate the strain on your back when you're bent over a baby while bouncing.