Sleep Or the Lack Thereof

Our son is nocturnal. He sleeps wonderfully all day for two or three hour stretches. Though I try to wake him, he is rather resilient. No amount of tickling or tummy-time can keep him awake if he wants to sleep. It's amazing and awful. Why? Because he has chosen the hours between 11 pm and 4 am as his "daytime." During those hours, he is wide awake and will not sit quietly in my arms. He gets all fidgety and often wants to be rocked or walked around (generally the latter).

Thankfully, he doesn't scream except for the occasional short outburst, but sometimes I feel like screaming. This feeling is the biggest problem. It's hard to be patient when all I want to do is sleep, so I sometimes get frustrated. For example, when he acts hungry but won't latch or stay latched for more than fifteen seconds, I get frustrated. When he wants to be walked around and simultaneously bounced in my arms for over an hour, my arms feel like they'll fall off and I get frustrated. I never realized how much I depended on sleeping during those hours of the night in order to stay nice and sane.

I've found two solutions that ease my frustration. The first came as a gift from my husband. After an annoying why-do-you-act-hungry-but-refuse-to-eat session with my son, Tyler came to my rescue, took the baby, and told me to sleep. I find that the hour or two Tyler gives me by taking the baby at the beginning of his awake time allows me to stay up with the baby later that evening. Not only can I stay up then, but I can stay up, be patient, and avoid frustration. This led me to the other solution. Since our son generally enjoys a two hour nap before staying awake during the late evening and early morning, I have started to try to get some sleep then too. This way I get the sleep I need to be calm and loving from the beginning and my husband also gets some good sleep because I don't get frustrated as early or as often.

Of course, I believe our son has started to realize this tactic because he is waking up earlier each night, making it more difficult to get to bed before he wakes for his stretch of "daytime" each evening. Hopefully this trend will not continue, unless it follows the pattern it did last night. While it might just be a fluke, yesterday the baby woke up for his stretch at 9 pm and went to sleep after eating at 2:20 am (I remember because it was glorious). Twenty after two in the morning may not seem so amazing, but after 4 am the past several nights I was practically ecstatic. I do prefer the 9 pm to 2 am schedule to the 11 pm to 4 am one. I struggled to get in bed before 10:30 each night and I only got up to 30 minutes sleep when I did. Who knows maybe tonight the baby will stay up starting at 7 pm and go to sleep at midnight! A mom can dream. :)