Take back the night

So tired. This morning it felt like we needed someone in tights and a cape before we would feel better, because it's like sleep ghetto in the Start-Up house and there's a rescue needed. I feel like I should be making a badly Photoshop'd poster with our tired faces that looks like an old B-rated horror movie ("It came from sleepless land"). We are so tired we have become bipolar; switching between playing on a tropical island total euphoria as he smiles and plays in the morning, then by the afternoon falling into hopeless on a desert island despair.

And then.. well, this is why I love Start-Up Mom so much. She just woke up and put her foot down said "we're not going to take it any more." She put up a schedule on the fridge, and right there in black and white for everyone (including the sleep nazi) to see it says, "8pm sleep" and then she has the GALL, no, the CAHONES, to put no other events between 8pm Sleep and 7am Wake.

And it's like a beacon, a bat-signal for sleep. We are energized, we will vanquish the sleep nazi, we have a schedule.



With newfound motivation we have been talking to our fellow new parents. And at first they all gave strange looks, sometimes saying vaguely helpful things like, "yeah, sometimes they just go through periods of sleeping less." To which I would like to kindly reply, "LESS, less is like 6 hours instead of 10, this kid is waking every hour and a half. The Mossad use this tactic to drive people utterly insane until they will do anything." (hmm... is that Kaden's plan?) But despite their smiles they don't look like it's quite as rosy with their kids as they let on anyway, so I let it go.

We do probe a little more though, and after a little unfurling I find some blogs that mention this same issue. As we go back to several friends and press a little more they seem to remember a little more, and we start to see a pattern. Turns out just about every one of the friends we talked to had a problem around four months where sleep got worse.

So, at first I'm ecstatic that we are not the absolute worst parents in the world and completely incapable of sleep-training a child. But then I'm like WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL US THIS BEFORE. Is there some conspiracy here? Why didn't the utterly self-contradicting and patronizing books like Healthy Sleep Habits mention this AT ALL!

I know, there are a lot of fans of the book, and there are some helpful things in it. But you mean to tell me this so-called doctor who did all this supposed sleep training, which I now believe was conducted on three baby squirrels and a chicken, didn't notice this trend that I - a completely distracted first time parent trying to simultaneously help run a company - was able to un-earth? I feel like a freshman in high school getting hazed and after trying all sensible logic with the seniors they finally break down and say, "well someone did it to us, so we have to do it to you." Now, I know older parents and ranted-at authors will find this unfair and claim they simply forgot all the details of what happened when, likely as they wave their hands about distractingly. But I will have none of it. I am here as the deep throat of month 4.

Yes, they smile like everyone says, and they even laugh a little, and they are generally awesome little things you just want to eat up they are so cute, but THEY WILL NOT SLEEP. IT WILL SUCK. And they will wear you down until you are just short of breaking and then you will say ENOUGH and you will Ferberize or take them back to bed or take away the pacifier or whatever drastic action adheres to your particular worldview. And from everything I have been reading that action will work, and you will feel triumphant. And all will be well.

And then they start teething.

Ah, but that is another rant sometime soon. For now, as Vizzini advised, "when a job went wrong, you go back to the beginning." When he last had sleep problems we put him in the bed for a week and then we moved him back to the crib and he was great. So, we restart. Kaden, welcome back to bed while we recharge for round two.