Sleeping In

Today is Saturday, and that means sleeping in! :D I am very fond of sleeping late, and really appreciate that I can actually do it again. First Son used to have soccer at 8 am on Saturdays, but the session is finished so now he and I can both sleep as late as we want.

I couldn't say which of the children is usually the one to wake up first. Last week, it was First Son. Today, I suspect it was Daughter, but she stayed in bed and watched things on YouTube, so I can't tell for sure when she awoke. Either way, I woke on my own; nobody woke me up. What a gift!

This past Thursday I bumped into a friend who I hadn't seen in ages and she mentioned that her two-year-old wasn't letting her get a full night's rest. I truly felt for her, and tactfully kept quiet about my new happy situation. I have to say though, and I hope some sleepy, tired mommies hear this loud and clear: it WILL get better!

When Daughter was about a week old, I put her down one night at 11 pm and she miraculously slept until  in the morning. I counted my lucky starts, but they soon faded. When she was three weeks old, we bundled her up and flew across the Atlantic with her, to a place where I had to keep her quiet at night because of the close proximity of the neighbors, and also during the day because people in the household worked at night and slept during the day. Daughter soon got used to being in my arms all the time, while I tried to keep her from fussing so that everyone else could sleep. It wasn't until she was well past two and a half years old that she finally learned to stay in bed alone and sleep through the night. Sadly, I had to stop nursing her altogether because she would wake up and the only way to keep her quiet would be to nurse her. Finally, I pretended that I had no milk so that she would stop asking. Some people would say that two and a half is plenty old enough to wean, but I would have preferred to have done it on Daughter's schedule, not the one imposed by the fact that I had to get some sleep or I wasn't going to be able to function at work the next day. So, it took a long time, but eventually Daughter was able to sleep through the night.

First Son was a different story altogether. He slept through the night very early, and he had two 2-hour naps every day, at mid-morning and in the afternoon, like clockwork. I must say that I had no complaints there. What I noticed with him was that I was much more relaxed and there was less stress in my life when he was born than when Daughter was born. When First Son was born, we were well established in our apartment, I was well established with my job, and I pretty much knew what to expect with a new-born. We also weren't planning any long trips. We stayed at home and led a quiet life which was much better suited to a baby's needs than when we had done with Daughter. With her, I had just finished university. Three weeks after she was born, we took her overseas to show her to the relatives there, and when we came back, we moved down to Florida practically the next day. There, I had six months to find a job, which I didn't, and when Daughter was sixteen months old, we moved back to Canada, just her and I. Her dad would stay on in Florida for a few months because he was in college there: he finished his semester before coming back to Canada. I had to find a job, a daycare and an apartment all at the same time. When I started working, it was the first job I had had since university and I worked hard and, basically, life was stressful. Not to mention we didn't find an apartment for three months. Daughter and I lived in a friend's basement for a while, then moved to another friend's spare bedroom. By the time she was two, she had lived in three countries, five different homes... it was understandably not a stable environment.

So if we want our kids to sleep through the night, we have to be able to offer them a stable environment. No moving about, no stress. I know this is easier said than done. In a perfect world, we could all provide our children with stability. But life isn't always easy and it isn't always fair.

By the time Second Son was born, my marriage had deteriorated significantly. I was depressed by the situation, wishing I could just leave with the three kids and live in peace. Understandably, Second Son was not a good sleeper. Not his fault. When he was a year-and-a-half, I finally left my husband. It was very scary and stressful, but I just had to leave. Lo and behold! after I left, Second Son finally slept through the night.

This is the wisdom that I learned from my experience. Other people can surely add to it. Some people recommend having an aquarium in a child's bedroom. You don't even have to have fish in it. Just run it on empty. The sound of the bubbles in the water is supposed to be soothing to a baby. Other people recommend playing relaxing music. Some people will recommend a night light. Others still will be against it. I can't call in a judgement about all of these tricks. It would require further reading.

What I have gleaned from experience is this: babies and young children need quiet. They need calm. They need constancy. And they need parents who are stress-free, because they are like little ampèremeters: they can feel when there is tension.

Of course, as kids get older their own tensions can also cause insomnia. Tensions caused by arguments with friends, anxiety about school, and family situations such as divorce will of course have their consequences. I can see this with First Son, the supersleeper baby who has lately been unable to get to sleep when he goes to bed. That is why we are going to a homeopath for treatment, and that is why sleeping in on the weekends is very important to him: he goes to sleep late. The homeopath is obviously not going to solve all the problems that cause First Son tension, but hopefully he can at least help him get a good night's sleep.