4.5 Months

Ahhh.  Do you hear that?  It's quiet (except for crickets chirping and the neighbor's air conditioner buzzing out the open window). 

Reid's asleep.

Please.
Let.
It.
Last.

I'm going to let you in on a secret.  It's a secret because if you ask me to my face... I'll probably lie.  Yep.  LIE. 

Reid's got a little sleep issue.  Or a big one.  It started at 4 months exactly.  Notice I haven't been posting too many blogs.  That's because a sleep monster has stolen all blogging moments.  For weeks leading up to The Great Four Month Sleep Regression of 2012, Reid was sleeping through the night.  Not the 5-6 hours that doctors and specialists refer to as sleeping through the night.  He was sleeping more like 7 or 8 or even (gasp) 9 hours.  Every night.

Then he started being a challenge to put down.  He'd nurse, get sleepy, and howl like a dying cat as soon as I gently placed him in his crib.  So I'd rock him for 10, 20, 30 minutes, until he was sleepy.  Then I'd set him down as c.a.r.e.f.u.l.l.y. as possible and tip toe out to the hall, all without breathing.  And sometimes that worked.  And sometimes I had to start back at the beginning.  It was WORK. 

And then?  And then he started waking up in the middle of the night.  Like 4 or 5 times.  And he was just as hard to put down each of those times too.  I'd nurse him, do the whole routine, and then put him down in his crib.  Sometimes he would start crying just as I was climbing back into bed.  That's when Adam would get up and try to soothe our poor, crying, sleep-deprived baby. 

So why would I lie about all that?  I mean, shouldn't I own it?  Shouldn't I have a reason for the bags under my eyes?  Shouldn't I earn a badge?  Or an award?

Well here's the thing.  When you're pregnant, there's a list of questions you get asked OVER and OVER and OVER:
When are you due?
What are you having?
Do you have a name picked out?
Is he moving a lot?
Do you wish he was a girl?

Then you have your bundle of joy and a whole new set of questions start raining down on you:
Are you going back to work?  When?
Is he eating well/enough?
How much does he weigh?
Is he sleeping through the night yet?

And folks, its that last question.  Is he sleeping through the night?  It's really not fair, because people start asking it, like, when you're still in the hospital.  I mean, come ON.  But you know what?  It's NORMAL for your baby to wake up at night.  It's NORMAL for your baby to only sleep a few hours and wake up.  It's NOT NORMAL for your baby to sleep through the night until he's much older, and even then, it's still NORMAL if he wakes up.

But people are still so judge-y.  And nosey.  And compare-y.  And if their kid sleeps one second more than your kid, they win.  They are obviously better parents because their kid is sleeping through the night.

So that's why I'll lie to your face about my kid sleeping through the night. 

But right now, he really IS sleeping.  So I win. :)

Here's a few pictures of my favorite little sleep monster.