Our Little Terrorist

Luke is now nearly 14 months old and I’ve pretty much been tired and sleep deprived for nearly 14 months and about two weeks. (It was so annoying when people told me to get rest while I could before Luke was born because I was so huge, bloated, had back pain and was just so uncomfortable that I was totally not getting any rest).

Marcus and I missed the sleep training boat for a few reasons. We live in a one-bedroom house, so sleep training would have been really hard because we wouldn’t have been able to leave Luke alone in his room, or be in a different room to be able to tolerate letting him self-soothe. We also didn’t love the idea of leaving a baby to cry, although I have heard that the more modern forms of sleep training don’t actually just leave a baby to bawl his eyes out.

The biggest reason for our sleep training fail is that we totally were just too lazy, exhausted and undisciplined to do it. Luke naps and starts out the night in his crib, but when he cries in the middle of the night and I nurse him, it is just so much easier to let him stay in bed with us for the rest of the night than to have to stay awake and get back out of bed to put him back in his crib. When he is fussy for some reason, or has a fever, it is easier to monitor him and pat him back to sleep when he’s lying right beside us than if we have to keep getting up to check on him.

With that said, I am so tired of not sleeping and I often wish we’d put in the effort to make this sleeping thing happen. Some very dear friends of mine have their babies on fantastic routines and they give me tips on how they did it, but so far those tips haven’t worked very well for us. I think it’s really too late for Luke now.

I do think (hope!) that soon he will not be waking at night for milk because he is getting lots of solid food and he should be able to make it through the night. But even if we’re not woken up for food, whenever Luke is in bed with us, his kicking, squirminess and acrobatics make sleeping somewhat unsafe. After particularly bad nights, Marcus greets Luke in the morning by saying “Good morning my little terrorist.” I recently saw a diagram on facebook detailing several co-sleep scenarios. I wanted to find the source of the photo and an internet search led me to the blog How To Be a Dad. The site is HYSTERICAL. Seriously. So funny. Check it out.

I want to share my favorite of the sleep positions they feature:

This is one of Luke's favorites.

He's also very good at jazz hands.

Luke doesn't really do this one but I think it is funny so wanted to include it.

Luke does this one all the time. Punches too. Marcus and I both sleep with our backs turned to him now. 

Luke is constantly kicking his legs so this one is a regular in our bed as well.

We don't actually have a very comfortable couch so this one hasn't happened yet but I think whoever got to go to the couch would actually get better sleep...

I frequently wake up to find Luke sitting up in bed staring at me. But then he usually grins and crawls over to slobber on me and then all is forgiven from the sleepless night before...