Sleeping Through The Night

"Does she sleep through the night?"  "Is she a good sleeper?" "Does she keep you up much?"
Are all questions I'm pretty sure I've come to despise hearing.


You are told that by the age of 8 months your baby should be able to sleep through the night (which actually they define sleeping through the night as a solid, undisturbed 8 hours). I say. Bollocks.

Zoe has never been a great sleeper at night, no idea why, it's just never happened for us. I think at first it was a case of "oh god, what am I doing wrong?" Trawling through google, and blogs to find the answer, not leaving the house so that nap routine isn't upset or thrown out of the window. Not letting James see to her in the night for fear of it ruining our chances even more. Doing everything the HV tells you to do, to the point where you think if you give her any more solid food she may actually burst, or just be sick everywhere.

Obviously it does get to a point where I'm frustrated when she doesn't want to be put back down and just wants to cuddle especially on nights where I have to get up for work in the morning, it's not one of those days where I can wear my pyjamas and not leave the house. I actually have to function outside the house, in the real world, with other adults. I think until she understands me, and I can tell her that it's bedtime and she must sleep I can cope with midnight cuddles. I remember James coming back to bed after he had started to get up in the night for her and telling me off for keeping those cuddles to myself. Now it's a case of who can get them first!

Then there are those nights, which must be pure fluke, when she does a solid 6-8 hours. (We rarely get more than 4) And I wake up feeling more tired than I usual am! I'm pretty sure that when she eventually does begin going solidly through the night that I'm going to have to train myself not to wake up and also sleep through the night again.



Eventually I accepted it, I just don't have one of those babies that wants to sleep all the way through. And it's fine, it just means that in the middle of the night when she wakes up, I get a cuddle. I get 10 more minutes with her, in that nice, warm, snuggly embrace where she buries her face into my neck and wraps her arms around me and falls back to sleep as I gently rock with her. 

The first time she napped in her cot, she looks tiny! September 2, 2014 (2 months old)