How easily I forget: Ode to Sleep

For those who know me well, or even slightly less than well, you know that I enjoy my sleep. I am one of those who regularly sleeps at least eight hours a night. Rarely do I go to bed after midnight and I have only been able to pull an all-nighter once in my life. Trust me, I've tried to stay up later than usual so that I could be a normal, fun-loving young adult, especially during those trips to Vegas. But no matter how many coffees, energy drinks, or cocktails I drink, I can't stay up. My body refuses. That's why when we had our first baby, I thought, how am I going to do this??

Surprisingly, I dealt with it just fine--the key for me was to get sleep no matter what time of day. Albeit, it was broken sleep, but because I have the ability to fall asleep quickly at any time of day, I am fortunately well-rested. I have the skill which many new moms struggle with which is to sleep when your baby sleeps. So sleep hasn't been a point of contention for me--but for my girls...that's another story.

Taylor gave us very few problems as a baby going to sleep. We had her sleep trained early--maybe around 3 months, we started letting her cry it out and within a short period of time, we had her trained so that as soon as we put her down into her crib, she would close her eyes and go to sleep. It is every parent's dream. That lasted for a while until around her first birthday. Somewhere around then, she got a really bad cold or maybe the flu, and for a few nights, we let her sleep in our bed with us. Not sure if that was a big mistake on our part or if we just need to accept that kids go through these phases regardless of what we do but after that, she resisted sleeping in her own crib. Shortly thereafter, we let her start sleeping in a real bed which she loved. But because she was able to crawl out of the bed herself, she would crawl out in the middle of the night and come into our room. Then, a little after our move to Irvine, she started getting night terrors where she would wake up screaming and crying in the middle of the night. Even when we run to her bedside to try and console her, you could tell that she was still sleeping but she would be wailing and kicking while half-conscious. Again, not sure if it's because of the move, or perhaps a new baby in the house, or simply just a phase in her life that many kids experience, but we feel pretty helpless as to what we can do to resolve this. As a parent, you are constantly having to remind yourself that life is full of ups and downs and that certainly applies to your children as well. There's no formula to calculating the perfect life for your child.

With Jamie, she's starting to transition from her newborn stage where all she does is sleep. She's staying up more during the day and getting her to nap has become a little more difficult. I try to swaddle her as tight as I can b/c otherwise, her sleep movements wake her up prematurely. But swaddling her can be hard because she fights it and seems to be a magician in getting herself out of my swaddles no matter how proud I am of my blanket-wrapping techniques. At night, we sleep her on her tummy but that gives us some challenges too as she often spits up and then ends up rubbing her face into it--I am constantly watching her after putting her down so that I can quickly clean up any spit-up that may follow. These are all normal baby sleep struggles, I know, but they are still stressful the second time around.

Sleep is so important. I know how much my girls need sleep in order to be healthy and happy. So no matter how much sleep I'm able to get, I can't rest without knowing that they are sleeping well.

Here's to good sleep: