I love Sleep

So after about 6 weeks of pure hell in the sleep department (literally more exhausting than their first few months) we finally had healthy babies with no immediate travel plans and we decided that it was time to sleep train them AGAIN. I have been so exhausted over the past weeks that it had started to affect my ability to be a good mother. I'm not kidding...I was short with them and not enjoying my time with them because I was just thinking of how much work I had to do or when I might be able to catch up on sleep. I don't consider myself someone who is at risk for depression, but I honestly started to worry that I was headed for some kind of fatigue based breakdown, and since I couldn't think of anything that was making me unhappy I knew it had to be the sleep deprivation (and travelling while sick didn't help). So I had to make a change, and I needed to do anything to get them to start sleeping through the night again (or really, for the first time).

Ahh, the "sleep subject"... a touchy one with most parents because there are so many opinions and it has such an impact on your life. The other day my friend Krista told me that she was having a harder time letting her second child cry, and I swear it is because for most of us, the first time around we get all gung ho about it, but the second time around we've basically figured out that sleep training never really ends so it is really hard to get psyched up for it. Now I say for most of us because there are those out there who got REALLY lucky in the sleep department. I have a friend whose identical twins sleep 14 hours consistently every night and she says she didn't do ANYTHING to make this happen. No joke. Or another friend whose daughter is a sleep angel-12+ hours a night, 3+ hours of naps. EVERY NIGHT. Her parents will tell you that it is a case of "input and output" --you get out of your kid what you put into them. I tend to hear this kind of statement from parents of good sleepers.

I have to say that as the mother of identical twins I can't agree. Why, you ask? I do the EXACT same thing with genetically identical daughters and they don't respond in the same way. After one night of a little crying Charlotte is now consistently sleeping from about 6:45 to 6:20ish in the morning. She even sleeps through Dylan crying. She then takes two pretty solid naps. Dylan, on the other hand, has been up several nights crying...she'll then sleep through the night and then be up again the next night. And she doesn't take nearly as good naps...I'm telling you that Charlotte would sleep even MORE if it weren't for Dylan. So how can it be purely a question of "input and output?" Now don't get me wrong, sometimes I know that I've made my own bed when I started feeding them again instead of letting them cry. And I'm a big believer in consistency and schedule, but I think you have to account for the personality of the child. We don't sleep the same way, so how can we expect our kids to? So what i'm really saying is that for those of you with great sleepers the first time around, I am secretly hoping you get insomniacs on the next go around (wait, did I say that out loud?!)

Anyway, short story long, things are much much better now, not perfect, but better. Charlotte generally does great, Dylan still breaks my heart. She is sleeping better, but still wants to wake up between 4 and 5 am. And she doesn't nap as well. She generally has a more intense demeanor and I wonder if that is affecting her sleep. We're trying to get her to sleep through the night but we're also trying to recognize that maybe she just needs a little more time and help to 'get' things. So it is a work in progress.

That being said, I feel like a new person this month. I haven't gotten 8 hours of sleep in a row in well over a year (I was up several times a night running to the bathroom starting at about 5 months pregnant) and my body really, really needed to start experiencing that again. (And don't the munchkins look happier too!? And yes, while they now refuse to get in the exersaucers they still love to roll around underneath them).