Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep

Those are some beautiful peepers, just not at 4 am.

After several nights of no sleep, I was mentally drafting a post about the frustrations that come with a newborn. Our nerves were frazzled. Our house was a mess. We couldn't remember if we had put soap in the washing machine, fed the dog, or paid the gas bill. Right when I was hitting my tipping point, Bennett gave me a good night.

If I thought I had been given a lot of advice when I was pregnant, being a new mom brought even more insight from friends, family and the lady in the Nordstroms restroom. I had been told that you should start to see improvement in the nighttime feedings at around six weeks. For 40 days I woke up to feed, change and rock baby Bennett to sleep every hour or every other hour. Then, at five weeks and six days he made it through the night only waking up twice. I woke up the next day feeling like a new woman. I had had six hours of sleep! The next night he did it again, even waking up at the same times. It felt like we were finding our new rhythm and perhaps making our new schedule.

Then came four nights of hell. He was up again every hour. He hadn't done that since he was two weeks old. Sometimes he'd wake up, eat and fall right back to sleep. Then, he'd be wide awake at 2, 3, and 4. I was whining to anyone who would listen. Should we feed every hour before bedtime? Should I take him on walks to get afternoon sunshine? Should we swaddle him differently? Should we wake him up from long daytime naps? Should I resort to drastic measures like breaking my addiction to chocolate? If I had to do that at Christmastime, the kid better mention me in his Oscar acceptance speech perhaps or name me an ambassador to a Carribbean island.

If I have learned anything over the past 46 days it is that babies are unpredictable. We did nothing differently last night and guess who only woke up only twice between? He was back on the same schedule he was last week. I would like to think we are turning a corner. Maybe it was a Tuesday night accident. Maybe it won't happen again for weeks. I will just be grateful for those nights when it does. Even when he has had a frustrating wakeful night, he smiles back with that dimpled grin and kicks his feet. It could almost make a woman stop asking strangers for advice.