Blog From A Broad

will trade food for sleep

When people start waxing nostalgic about the days when their kids were little babies, I tell them to take Jack for the night and enjoy the company of a cute but incredibly awake little boy to see if this keeps the nostalgia at bay. Perhaps it was because we felt smug that we had a baby who slept through the night fairly early on. Maybe it was all those times we told people that we had the happiest baby on earth. Whatever the reason, we are now paying for it by having to endure sleepless nights. Jack's been waking up at around 4 in the morning (sometimes having slept for a few hours beforehand, but sometimes he'll wake up every hour on the hour since we put him to bed), bright-eyed and standing up in his cot with a huge smile on his face. No amount of rocking, soothing, ignoring, feeding, cuddling, pleading, or bribing can get him back to sleep. It's 4am and it's time to par-tay! We've taken turns spending the wee hours in his room, either getting up every few minutes when he starts crying again or holding him until he finally gets bored and falls asleep. We are experts at tag team baby wrangling.

We think it may be from teething, but I'm horrified to think that this will go on for another year and a half. I'm pretty sure that my sanity is already nearing its sell by date, let alone 18 months from now. The funny thing is, I don't feel as dreadful as I think I should from the lack of sleep. In fact, I can still manage to stay awake during an hour long pilates class at 10am, which is no small feat. Hopefully this is just a phase and we'll get a full night's sleep again soon. I think I now know why babies are designed to look so cute - it's very difficult to be upset at a little being with a face like this, even at 4 o'clock in the morning.