Until We Sleep

We have sleep issues.

Abbey has never been the best sleeper; she rarely naps, although she is in a much better mood when she does, and she is generally up at least once a night.

Dylan, however, is proving to be even more of a challenge.  He wakes up a lot to eat, which I am working to stop.  Of course, he won't take a pacifier, which is making it hard to get him back to sleep without feeding him.  In addition to the multiple wake-ups, he doesn't love his crib; he's happiest sleeping near other people.  Unfortunately, neither Ryan nor I are comfortable becoming a co-sleeping family, so we are powering through the crib issues.

Like I said, we're working on it.  It's one of the most frustrating parenting issues we've dealt with to date, because the lack of sleep is making us all slightly off our games.  Something that is creating an additional headache for me is that I am finding myself bookended by polar opposite viewpoints being expressed by various people in our lives.  I feel like half of the people I talk to think we're crazy for not implementing hard-core sleep training (complete with lots of crying) and the other half want me to drink some mommy-martyr kool aid that will convince me that I'm crazy for expecting to sleep more than an hour at a time on any given night.  Maybe it's the lack of sleep, but I find myself gritting my teeth and implementing the "smile and nod" anytime sleep comes up in conversation.

I try not to complain about the lack of sleep, and I'm not really looking for advice when I do talk about it.  I did a ton of sleep research with Abbey, and now we're just trying to find something that 1) we're comfortable doing and 2) works for Dylan (since obviously not all kids are the same). 

I guess it's something about parenting that really brings out the Ann Landers in people.  Hopefully D will sleep soon, but until then I have a feeling I'll be pulling out the smile and nod a few more times before then.

I am so glad we painstakingly researched cribs and mattresses.

"And (to quote Forrest Gump) that's all I have to say about that."