And The Princess Sleeps...

Today has ended a four day battle in the Shipley house--I am still not sure who has won, but in my sleepless daze I have decided to try it "her way." For several days in a row our beautiful and charming baby Gracie went to bed without a fuss, slept until 6-7am, got in the bed with us, and returned to sleep. On these days which shall be henceforth known as the "glory days," beautiful baby Gracie also took a 2 hour nap.

Now, we all know that babies need plenty of sleep. The rule of thumb for Gracie's age is 13-14 hours a day. 12 at night and a 1-2 hour nap.

In the early days of the sleep war (Thursday), baby Gracie went to bed a night, but she began to cry at 3-4 am, and then wake up again at 6-7am and not go back to sleep. She also did not take a nap. Now I admit that I am a rookie when it comes to parenting, but it seemed logical to me that she wasn't getting enough sleep and it was up to me to see that she did. For days I fought with her, cuddling her in the bed, begging her to go to sleep. As you can imagine I spent most of the day and night trying to force my willful child to sleep. In fact, I spent so much time doing this, we all ended up aggravated and sleep deprived.

Today I decided to try something else. After all, we had been fighting and grouchy too long for my taste, and our "make her sleep" tactic was failing miserably. Now you may not see the problem, but let me dig deeper. Garren is a night owl. He stays up until 1-2 am. Gracie goes to bed at 8pm. And, I am stuck in the middle. I want to sleep badly, but I find myself not wanting to waste the time I have with my husband, and it seems I have a hard time falling asleep without everyone in bed (this is a terrible post-child thing that my mother never warned me about, and laughs at now).

The princess Grace awoke at 7am this morning after crying her way in to our bed around 3am (I feel asleep as usual before I could return her to her crib). After trying 2 times to get her back to sleep (she didn't go to sleep until 9:30 last night, even though she was in her crib by 8:15), I decided to admit defeat and get up. Gracie, Garren and I all started our day at 7:15am. While this doesn't seem unusual to you, it is very unusual to us. We ate breakfast at the table, we brushed our teeth together--it was really cute, we had fun playing, and no one had to rush. I am hoping that now that she has been awake for 5 hours, a nap will be easy and so will bedtime tonight.

So often we force her to conform to our schedules. She eats when we eat, she gets dressed when we decide to dress her, she goes places when we want to go. It is easy to get into the pattern where you are the parents and what you says goes, and we forget to listen to our child. I am not sure exactly what she is trying to say, but I feel sure she is trying to send us a message about the current schedule and how difficult it is for her. I feel like a terrible mommy, not because I tried to force her to sleep--but that I was so caught up in my sleeplessness that I wasn't really listening to her needs. I certainly hope our sleep schedules work themselves out, but in the meantime I plan to pay extra careful attention to Gracie.

PS: The plan seems to be working. Gracie was asleep in 5 minutes after I laid down with her for nap today. (see picture above)

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