A Brief History of Sleep

When Penny as first born, she slept all the time. That first week home from the hospital, all she did was sleep. We couldn't wake her to eat. She was born on Monday and did not even cry - not even once - until Friday. And then. She woke up. And hasn't been back to sleep since. I kid. (A little.)

There were days during weeks 3 - 4 when she didn't sleep for 14 or 15 hour stretches. Didn't sleep. At all. For 15 hours. Mind boggling.

But, then, about 8 weeks, she started sleeping at night. The first night she slept for 3 hours, and then it was 3.5, and then 4, and so forth. For awhile there she went to bed at midnight and slept until 7 (she woke when the sun came up). Gradually, bedtime crept backwards to 1130, then 11, then 1030, and so forth. At some point the time changed, and the average asleep-in-the-crib time became 830.

All well and good. But naps. Oh, naps. Therein lies the issue. For the months that she went to bed about 11 to midnight and slept until 7, she woke at 7 and I nursed her and she would go back to sleep until 10. She did that for probably two months. I always said that I felt like I was cheating saying that she slept "through the night" because if she'd have gone to bed at 9 and slept until 4, nursed and was back to sleep until 7 (the same schedule pushed back 3 hours) everyone would have said she was "waking during the night". But it was the same thing! Same. Thing. Only I got to claim that she was "sleeping through the night" (insert eye-rolling).

As she started going to bed earlier, that going back to sleep started taking longer in the mornings. Gradually, she'd be up for thirty minutes or an hour before falling back to sleep and sleeping until 10. But the thing is, she has always needed to fall back to sleep in the mornings like that. She still does.

She doesn't want to sleep in the afternoons. I know all the books say one nap a day - just after lunch. But it doesn't work that way for us. If she goes to sleep at noon, she will not fall asleep until 10 o'clock or later. And, well, yeah, okay fine - so what? Except I really value my "free time" in the evenings and those nights that she stays up until 10 are very frustrating. I have to work on my class, and house projects to get it ready to sell, and just general housework, and occasionally I like to check my email, and oh my gosh kid, just go to sleep already! (Did I mention we cancelled our cable because we went like two months without even turning our tv on?)

If she doesn't take a nap at all though, she's asleep at 7 like a light. And I have hours and hours of free time that I use skipping through the daisies. But she can be cranky doing that.

If she goes back to sleep mid-morning, she'll be asleep around 830. Which I can live with.

So. To recap. Morning naps, or no naps. I'm cool with either. Afternoon naps? Not so much.