I’ve always had this preconceived idea in my head that Molly would have 3 solid naps a day, right on schedule and all I’d have to do is put her down in her cot, say it’s sleep time and she’d easily fall right off to sleep and stay asleep for at least an hour. I don’t know where I got this ridiculous idea from. Movies maybe? Or social media? It’s not true! I’m sure it might be for some people but for my baby daytime naps were always a constant battle. I think there was a period of about 5 days where she just didn’t sleep during the day at all. I couldn’t cope. Sam came home one day and I was in tears. I googled and came up with nothing. It’s better now. It can still take half an hour to get her to sleep sometimes but she’ll usually stay asleep for an hour, sometimes more. Most days she’s getting two good naps now.
I guess I’ve always considered myself quite lucky with sleep though because she’s always been a good night time sleeper. We could put her down at bedtime and usually not hear anything from her until probably 4am at the earliest which was great. Usually it was closer to 6! We were getting a decent amount of uninterrupted sleep at night which i knew was great compared to what some people were going through. The problem with this though, is that when it changed it hit us like a ton of bricks.
When we went through the 4 month sleep regression it was tough but luckily it didn’t last very long. Looking back, I can say that it was a very short period of time that really wasn’t as bad as it felt. Now we’re in the midst of another sleep regression, I’m having a hard time believing that it’s going to get better anytime soon. It’s very easy to see things clearly when you look back but during it’s an absolute nightmare isn’t it? I’m not yet feeling the effects of sleep deprivation but I’m sure it’s coming. We’ve been woken up 3 or 4 times for a few nights in a row now and I hate it. I love my sleep and I don’t cope very well without it.
She’s also started waking up about half an hour after we put her down to sleep and screaming. I have no idea where this new thing has come from! I’ve been on the old Google and it seems as though this age is where they start to experience separation anxiety. They know you’re still near so they cry for you to come to them so maybe she’s doing that? It just means that alongside being woken up multiple times in the night again, we’re also being robbed of our evenings which has been tough.
I’m not complaining (much). I love my daughter and I know she’s still a baby and developing, but I wish there was some consistency. I feel like if she’d been a bad sleeper all along then it would be much easier to cope with when she regresses. I don’t think you could call it a regression then though could you? At least her naps have gotten better - for now.
(Update - Last night she slept through until 6:45am after her silly wake up 30 minutes after being put down. But trying to get her to nap today took me over half an hour. I just can’t win.)
