Now I lay me down to sleep

    Paityn is a good baby. I often get asked if she is really as happy as she looks in all of her pictures, and the answer is yes. She occasionally gets fussy, but overall she is just a happy girl! I really can't complain about her - there is just one small problem......my child isn't into sleeping. If anyone knows me they know I am the queen of sleep. I wish I could say sleep is overrated, but not only do I need lots of sleep, I enjoy it. I often get I often talk to people and when I tell them that my 6 month old does not sleep through the night their eyes get wide and they say "oh really?" I usually then get the comments of how their child has sleep through the night since 6-8 weeks or whatever. My mom said that by the time she went back to work (when we were 3 months) both my brother and I had just "figured it out." My sweet little daughter has just not wanted to "figure it out." Would it be really nice if she slept through the night?, yes it would be great, but to Brian and I it is not that big of a deal. What I always tell myself is it is only temporary and it won't last forever.

   Paityn has always been a very "weird" sleeper since day one. Our originally plan was to keep her in the pack and play by our bed for the first few months. However, we hit a road block the first night we did not anticipate. We set the pack and play up on our room and Zoe went crazy. She was scared of it. She whined and wouldn't leave it alone. We didn't feel comfortable with Paityn in it with Zoe acting like she was so we took it down and to her crib she went. She has slept in her crib since the first night we brought her home. I had also read a book called 'The Happiest Baby on the Block' which people swore by. This book emphasized the need for swaddling for calming and sleep. I religiously swaddled Paityn and to this day we still do (although she breaks out of it most of the time). She was a typical newborn and woke up every couple of hours.

  Naps were hard for us. When we would try to put her in the crib she would just open her eyes and start to cry, unable to be soothed. If she did sleep, it was 30 minutes max, which is just not long enough for a newborn, so we held her. We held Paityn for every nap. It was the only way I felt that she could actually get the sleep she needed. By 3-4 months, Paityn had transitioned to taking a morning and afternoon nap and we had transitioned to co-napping on the couch. By doing the co-napping, she would sleep for 1-2 hrs at a time.

  The nights gradually got better and she got down to waking usually once around 1-3am for a feeding. Most of the time she would go right back to sleep and other times she would just be awake for an hour plus. At 4.5months we added cereal at bedtime. The comments I got from the majority of the people were "once you add some cereal, my baby slept through the night." Well, not so with Paityn. I did not notice any difference with the addition of cereal.

     Just before 6 months, Paityn started waking up in the middle of the night and not crying, but just "talking" and wanting to play for anywhere from 1-2.5 hours. Sometimes we would just feed her and she would go to bed, other times she would remain awake. I have no problem letting her talk, but I still can't fall back asleep. Eventually she would get frustrated and either go to sleep herself or I would give her the pacifier and she would drift off. She is very capable of putting herself to sleep and we put her to bed awake, but she is just wide awake in the middle of the night. Some people have suggested putting her to bed later. That is a great idea, but come 7pm Paityn is just done. She is so crabby it is hard to calm her. She rubs her eyes, yawns and is just dead tired. I talked to the nurse practitioner about her sleeping habits and she told me to cut out the middle of the night feedings. We tried....it did not go well. I also have changed her naps. I decided that although I LOVE to co-nap, she did have to learn to sleep in her crib so we have been having her take her morning naps in the crib. Her morning naps went from 1-2 hrs to 30 minutes on the dot. She wakes happy and we co-sleep in the afternoon so she gets more sleep. They say having an overtired baby can cause them not to sleep well. We thought perhaps she was getting too much sleep, so one day she did take 3 - 30 minute crib naps. She sleep through he night that night and we thought we were onto something. We did the same thing and the next night she was up and awake by midnight for an hour and a half. We have tried a bedtime routine, swaddled, not swaddled, noise, etc.

  I know a lot of people say "you just have to let them cry it out." I am just not comfortable with that at this point. I am sure there will be a point in time when I will be okay with it (when she can understand to go to bed, etc), but not right now. I am more than happy to let her talk in her crib, but I just want her to feel rested. I am off from work for 9 days now. During this time I am going to try doing the 30 minute naps, continue the night feeding, and see how she does. I know I have to not worry about what people think and do what is best for us and Paityn. As long as she is happy,  at this point I am not so worried about her being awake in the middle of the night - for heaven sakes I work night shift, she is probably used to if from when I was pregnant with her. I am going to try my best to just follow her cues and hope she is getting enough sleep - based on how happy she is I think we are doing okay!