Kids-why you won’t sleep much for a few years

It was the dark of night and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…

Then you hear a whisper, ‘mamma. Mamma.’ you close your eyes tight and hope it will pass. It doesn’t. You glance at the alarm clock to see if it’s worth climbing back into bed afterwards. It’s 4:30 am.

It all started 2 years and 10 months ago with the birth of our first daughter. People tell you about the sleepless nights but not really why. I’ve always known babies need night feeds so I figured once that phase had passed, we’d sleep through the night again. I was right. She started sleeping 10 to 12 hours straight from being about 10 weeks old. For a while and we thought we’d cracked it. We were on cloud nine.

Then the teething started and she woke up crying at least once a night, for a few weeks at a time. She would sleep through like an angel for weeks then all of a sudden the crying would start again, in the dead of night. She had all her teeth by two years old and we were in the blissful zone of being able to sleep all night; aside from the odd illness. Lulled into a false sense of security, we decided to have our second baby.

We now have a 3 month old and a nearly 3 year old. Our littlest woke up twice or more through the night for the first couple of months. I worked hard to keep her routine and feed her plenty of milk in the day. She started sleeping around 10 hours a night for about a week. Then she started waking at 4 or 5 am because the nappy was soaking through her clothes in the night. It’s all trial and error so we trialled various nappies. This is ongoing. It’s like the nappy companies don’t want us to sleep.

Meanwhile our oldest is suddenly scared of the dark so she started refusing to go to sleep without the light on. We started by leaving her room light on but then she’d wake in the early hours thinking it was morning and calling out for breakfast. This, again, was trial and error for a while with fairy lights, a night light. Eventually I coloured her lamp bulb with a Sharpie. It’s dim enough not to wake her but bright enough that she’s not scared.

Up until a few nights ago we were doing well. The nappy was holding well (Lidl size 3) , the dim lamp was doing it’s job. Maybe I’m masochistic but I thought it would be a good time to take the nappy off our oldest for bed. The poo of a nearly 3 year old compared to a new born is like a cowpat compared to mouse droppings. It was getting too much so we bit the bullet. So far we’re on night four of the training.

So here I am at 4:30 am going to change her bed clothes and clean her up before starting the day. 4am would have been better. At least I would’ve had time to fall asleep again. She’s getting better though. She peed herself, but she saved number two for the toilet bowl. She’s such a clever girl and I know she’ll get the hang of it, just like she did through the day.

Even when the nights go smoothly there’s always this little part of me waiting for the next thing to happen to wake me up. I may never sleep quite as well as I did before, but the sleepless nights also come with baby smiles, leg rolls, that baby head smell, cuddles, storytime, bath time, walks to the playground, trips to the beach, splashing in the pool and all those other special moments that I wouldn’t change for the world. I can sleep when they’re old enough to take care of themselves.