Dear Riley, Would You Please Start Sleeping through the Night Again? We Would Really Appreciate It. Thanks. Love, Mom and Dad

Wow, this post ended up being much longer than I had originally planned. Then again, I do have a tendency to tell stories with an insane amount of detail. Once I get going, it’s hard to stop sometimes. So just sit back, relax, and deal with it.

Much like his mother, Riley started out as a great sleeper. We were getting 3 or 4 hour stretches out of him when he was just a few days old, and that quickly extended to 6 or 7 hours in a matter of a few weeks.

Kenny and I realized how lucky we were to have a firstborn kid that slept so great right off the bat. However, that didn’t mean we failed to jump for joy every now and then when we stopped to think about it.

But perhaps we shouldn’t have been so quick to do so.

Starting right after Thanksgiving, Riley rebelled. He began waking up 5 and 6 times each night (except when Grandma kept him overnight the week after Turkey Day. Of course he slept all night for Grandma. She had to WAKE HIM UP at 8am the next morning. The little traitor.), propelling Kenny and I into what we should have experienced from the start: a newborn’s normal pattern of sleep. And let me tell you, it was ugly. We groaned, we shed tears, we grabbed the sides of our heads in frustration and cried out, “why, God, why?!?!”

Well, I did. Kenny just handled it in typical Kenny-like fashion: he dealt with it very matter-of-factly and most of the time did it on his own and let his grumpy-when-she-doesn’t-sleep-enough wife stay in bed. He even turned the monitor off and went to sleep elsewhere so I wouldn’t hear the child awaken.

Yes, I do realize I married a saint.

(However, since this broken sleep has been going on for a while now, I refuse to let my husband deal with it every night, even though he would. So we’ve been taking turns.)

We know Riley’s not waking up because he wants to eat. He hasn’t had a middle-of-the-night feeding for a long time. Almost every time he wakes up his eyes stay closed. But he cries and squirms around a lot. And then he usually lets out a couple of audible farts. After that, he’ll start sucking on his pacifier that we’ve given him and usually settle back down. So, nine times out of ten, we’re convinced it’s gas that wakes him up.

This waking-up-multiple-times-a-night thing has been going on for about three weeks now. We’ve gotten two, maybe three, good nights out of Riley this month, but that’s all. At the beginning of one such night, with absolutely no thoughts in our heads that it would go well, Kenny and I decided to go into his room and check on him before we turned in ourselves.

You see, we recently started to put Riley down for the night much earlier than we had been. We used to put him to bed around 10pm, which was WAY too late according to multiple sources. Our rationale was this: if we kept him up later, he’d sleep later the next morning. But apparently, that line of thinking is all wrong. The later you keep them up, the more tired they become, and the harder it is for them to get good sleep.

Makes perfect sense! So we thought we’d give the earlier bedtime a shot. This particular night was one of the first attempts. We probably put him down around 8:30 or so. And when he hadn’t woken up crying after an hour, I simply couldn’t believe it. I just had to go look at him to make sure he was still breathing.

With Kenny following me, I stealthily approached Riley’s room, taking slow, exaggerated, tip-toe steps towards his crib. I wasn’t about to wake him up just by walking too loudly. I peeked down at him, sleeping soundly. Then, and I’m not really sure what set me off (again, this has been known to happen), I started to laugh.

I felt it coming, and I knew I HAD to remain quiet because I was standing right next to my son’s crib. My sleeping son, who hadn’t given his parents a good night’s sleep in (too) many nights. So I suppressed it. Only, I didn’t quite work at it hard enough, and the laugh came out as a huge snort. Both through my nose and from deep within my throat. It actually kind of hurt.

I ran out of the room and into the bedroom across the hall, Kenny on my heels. He closed the door and I collapsed onto the bed, burying my face in the pillows and getting it all out. At this point, Kenny was laughing too, mostly at my sly approach but also at my unexpected outburst.

Miraculously, Riley did not budge and continued to sleep through it all. Whew. I would have been so mad at myself had he woken up.

That was one of the few good nights. We are continuing with the earlier bedtime as best we can, but every night is different. I think he’s still a little too young for a rigid routine, so we’re just kind of taking our cues from him. And even though he’s still waking up a few times each night, we’re starting to get a decent stretch from him in the early part of the night, from whenever he goes down until about 2am. Then it’s still usually the gas that wakes him up.

Will these annoying wake-ups stop once he’s no longer on breastmilk? Will they become even more of a remote memory once he starts solids? Or, perish the thought, could they get worse? Only time will tell.

Kenny and I are still really grateful that Riley took it easy on us for the first few months. But please, son, have a heart and go back to the way it was. It would be so much better, for you as well as for your dad and me.

Then again, it could totally be my fault that you wake up at night. And if that is the case, my dear sweet boy, I am truly sorry. But I worked very hard for that breastmilk, darnit, and I’ll continue to give it to you until it’s gone, even if it is the culprit!

Besides, it’s almost gone. Almost.