Baby Gubbins

Today I am happy and baby G is happy. Why? Because we’ve had the most sleep overnight ever, since he was born. He slept all the way through to 4:45 and then after an hour long interlude, he went back to sleep until 7:30. It felt so luxurious and abnormal, that I had to ask my hubby to check whether G was still breathing on his way out to work.

To many parents (I seem to be surrounded by parents of this kind) this sort of sleep pattern is normal at this age, or at worst inconvenient because of the early morning wake-up. For us, it has been a long exhausting journey to get to this point. Unfortunately my training as an engineer drove me to try “solve” the sleep problem: Spending hours reading and researching; taping cardboard onto the window; trying white noise, calming noise, no noise; singing, rocking, hushing, crying….

Then at some point I realised that a baby is not a Sudoku. There is no logic or pattern. I just had to accept that my baby is not a great sleeper. I can’t say that this helped my mental state or that this revelation resulted in the sublime night that we had last night. But I can say that I am now a recovered insomniac who has mastered the art of micro-naps. Give me 10 minutes and I will fall into the deepest slumber. Call me Snow White.

It’s only taken 11 months to get to this point. 11 months on the dot today. This is the last time Baby G will be a collection of months less than a year! How the time has flown!! Strange as my waking moments have definitely been longer and more frequent than before G was born. 

Anyway long may the long sleeps last and in the words of my hero, Dr Seuss: “Today was good, today was fun. Tomorrow is another one”