Motherhood // An ‘I miss sleep’ ramble

I miss sleep. In the past 18 months, I’ve probably had the grand total of 7 nights where I’ve actually slept through the night. Pregnancy insomnia was rife during Tabby’s pregnancy, and then sleep has been a rarity since she arrived earth-side. It has reached the point where I’m envious of fictional characters sleeping on the television… and even this week, I’ve been jealous of H-Bear’s poorly napping during the day.

I don’t really know what the answer is in regards to getting Tabby to sleep through. We thought we’d almost cracked it a couple of months ago. She had a week of only one wake up a night, which was doable. She’d wake up for milk, she’d drink the milk and then she’d go back down. We felt like new people after a decent size chunk of sleep! But since then, it’s been back to hourly wake-ups most nights, unless she comes into bed with us.

Part of the reason she wakes when she’s in her own bed, is because she likes cuddles. It does get quite chilly in her room, and she likes to be snuggled up next to me. At the moment she’s too little to have a duvet, but I do wonder whether introducing one will make a difference to her sleep. The sleeping bags don’t seem to be having the same effect!

H-Bear was never a good sleeper as a baby; although his silent reflux and CMPA didn’t help the situation. But he did eventually realise sleep was the best (because it is, isn’t it? Sleep is glorious! I keep thinking back to those nights in my late teens / early twenties when I’d be clubbing until the early hours, and then “what a waste of time when I could have been storing up sleep for my future as a parent!”).

Since then he’s pretty much slept through the night consistently. We introduced a dummy for him, when helped considerably, but I’ve already tried that with Tabby, and she’s having none of it!

I’m wondering whether having a room shuffle between the three children would be a good idea when she’s a little bit older. That way she would share a room with H-Bear (which she would LOVE), and I know Busby would appreciate having her own room again. I’ve been browsing the Children’s Bed Shop website with this in mind. Busby would love a high cabin bed with a desk underneath so she could write and draw in her own space. Although I’m rather obsessed with this bed…

Anyway, thank you for reading my ramble. If you have any further ideas for getting an almost one year old to sleep, then please let me know! A friend has lent me a book of gentle sleeping techniques, so I shall be consulting that over the next week… and if all else fails, coffee will remain a reliable constant for getting us through the sleep deprivation for the foreseeable future.

Hannah