My Complaint

I've always been a sleeper. 8 or 9 hours is my ideal. I know that a nightly 9 hours is highly ambitious for someone over the age of say, 5, but I used to get it as often as possible.

The story of my sleep is the story of motherhood. My nine whittled down to 8, 7, 6 as I became more and more pregnant with Eva. From my 8th month of pregnancy on I was getting 5 or 6 hours. And then she was born. And she didn't sleep. But by the time she was 7 or 8 months old she was only waking once, and I was sleeping 7 hours again. Not all at once, of course. By 10 months she was sleeping through the night, and by the time I got pregnant again I was back to a solid 8 hours of sleep.

Now I am plunged back into sleep hell. 10 months old next week and Waylon is still waking 2 or 3 or 5 times. If I could go to bed when he does, at 7:30, I suppose I could handle this, as his wakings come much later at night. And they start about an hour after I fall asleep.

People give advice about this. Let him cry. Sure, that makes him fall back asleep on his own, but it doesn't stop him from waking up again and hour or 2 later.

There is nothing I want more in this world right now than just ONE night of 6 hours of solid sleep. Six hours of deep sleep. Six hours of burrowing deep in a nest of flannel and fleece. Six hours of dreaming. Six hours of heaven.