It was all going so well. Things were good. I started to relax and bend the rules. I bent them too far and this morning I got what I deserved.
I am talking, of course, of the cardinal rules of baby sleep. After a long (and wonderful!) year I have painstakingly compiled a list of rules that Must Not Be Broken if you want your baby to sleep. Being the kind person that I am, I am going to share these rules with you. Please note that although breaking just one rule will almost certainly guarantee no sleep, slavishly following all the rules does not actually guarantee any sleep. It’s just not that straightforward.
- Do not make any plans for what you are going to do whilst Baby is sleeping. This is particularly the case with daytime naps but also applies to the early morning hours when the mind is prone to making frantic calculations of just how many more hours/mins of sleep you will get when Baby succumbs to your finely honed feeding/rocking/singing routine. For daytime naps particularly fatal thoughts include a) fantasising about sitting down with a hot drink and/or an illicit snack that you wouldn’t want to share with Baby, b) looking forward to finding out what happens next in that wonderful book you’re currently reading, and c) compiling a list of people who’s emails you really must reply to before they think you’ve ditched them as friends – although frankly even anticipating the joy of doing the washing up followed by a trip to the loo alone will ruin your chances.
- Do not plan the following morning based on when Baby has been waking up for the last n nights. It doesn’t matter how big n is, as soon as you set your alarm for half-an-hour-before-Baby’s-wake-up-time (so you can shower and dress without continually calling out “Mummy’s coming sweetheart, she just needs to wash her hair/clean her teeth/fully wake up first!”) you have ensured that Baby will wake up at least 31mins earlier than usual.
- Do not tell anyone if Baby starts sleeping well. Especially your parents. You’ll only have to let them down again the following day.
Thomas has been sleeping through (8pm-8am, none of this 12am-5am rubbish – that’s not a full night’s sleep!) fairly reliably for the last 3 weeks – in fact, since I last blogged (about his bad sleeping funnily enough). Last night I chatted to my parents and some friends, updating them on his wonderful new sleep habits. I then went to bed late (around midnight) and set my alarm for 7.30am. We got up this morning at 5.30. Bleugh.
“Do not make any plans for what you are going to do whilst Baby is sleeping.”
This is so so true. It’s like being at work and knowing your break is coming up, and starting to think about coffee and being quiet for ten minutes … but then you’re told you can’t go and it’s SO MUCH harder to keep doing your job.
I’m sure that 100% of my nap-related tears come from this feeling of missing out on something you’d planned to do – whether it’s cleaning up, or having a cup of tea, or a sleep, or some cake
… I feel desperately guilty that I WANT my baby to go to sleep so that I can be alone, but really, you need a break. So badly.
At least you know you’re not alone…
I can relate to all of these! Just after Jake first started sleeping through, I went around proclaiming it rather proudly. The very same night, he proved me wrong for the next 9 months!
I also went through a phase of not reading during Jake’s naps because he went through a phase of waking up about 2 minutes after I got settled into my book.
These days, I tend to plan only some cooking during his naps.