March 24, 2013

The First Rule of Baby Sleep….

The first rule of baby sleep is that you DO NOT talk about Fight Club… I mean baby sleep. If things are going well and you breathe a word of it to the outside world, things will get bad really fast. Sometimes it will be so bad that your child will never again perform the sleep feat that you were so excited about.

I have bonded with most of my Twitter friends over the common ground of breastfeeding, attachment parenting, and being up in the middle of the night trying to get a baby to go back to sleep, usually via breastfeeding or attachment parenting. There is something we mothers of non-sleepers refer to as “Sleep Karma” which means the moment you mention your child’s sleep success they will either wake up or never do it again. How many times have you sat down after a rough bedtime, texted or tweeted “finally asleep, that was rough” and then had your child immediately wake up? That’s Sleep Karma. It’s an evil beast. This only applies to talking about good sleep though. You can complain about crappy sleep as much as you want on social media and nothing bad will happen except maybe some advice to just leave your kid alone to cry (which you’d be doing if that were something you wanted to do thankyouverymuch).

Three weeks ago one of my best friends assured me that TT would grow out of her “up every two hours” four month wakeful period and gave the example that her nine month old was finally a great sleeper. Her great sleeper woke seven times that night. He hasn’t slept since. Fight Club.

My most recent incident was when I posted on Instagram and Facebook that TT slept 9 hours straight in her Magic Sleepsuit. Everyone oohed and ahhed, some silently cursed my good fortune and… she hasn’t slept well since. Fight Club.

I don’t know why, after nearly three years of parenting, I still let myself fall victim to Sleep Karma. When you’re a parent of a non-sleeper you really want to shout from the rooftops when your kid actually starts sleeping just to have evidence that it actually happened. Now I live in fear though. Sleep ebbs and flows and pretty much drives me nuts so I’m trying to just let it be.

I’d tell you how TT is doing now at 4.5 months but… I can’t. Fight Club.