The Sleep Situation

Most of my posts are pretty upbeat because, for the most part, life with Harper and Tannah is pretty fantastic.  Most parents probably feel this way, but I really think we have some of the sweetest babies in the world.  However, since part of the purpose of this blog is to document our lives so I don't forget all of the fun stuff we have going on right now, I would be remiss if I didn't also mention our biggest challenge - sleep, or more accurately, lack thereof.

I'm nursing the girls, so until I went back to work, I got up for every single feeding.  Around two months, the girls were sleeping reasonably well, and only getting up once during an eight hour period.  I'm not exactly sure what happened, but at the beginning of July our sleep situation went downhill.  I think that Harper has gotten up at least three times every night since then, sometimes it's four or five times.  It can also take a few hours to get her to sleep at night. 

After my first week of work, we decided that Wei-Yand was going to have to take over some of the night duty or I wouldn't be able to function at work.  Fortunately, we have lots of frozen milk, so I try to go to sleep as soon after we get the girls down as possible.  Unfortunately, we often eat after they go to bed, so it's often 10 or 10:30 before I go to sleep.  Wei-Yand covers any wakings until about 2 am, then I'm back on duty.  I'm usually up around 2, 4, and 6.

This has led to some seriously tired parents.  Every once in a while one of us gets a six hour stretch of sleep, but most often the most we get is four.  Wei-Yand seems to be dealing with the lack of sleep better than me (perhaps because he often gets naps in during the day while the girls are sleeping).  However, he has definitely relied on some crutches (i.e. the swing and holding the girls) to get them to take longer naps during the day, and he has to go back to work in two weeks.  I worry that napping at daycare is going to be a fiasco.

In short, as much as I hate to do it, it's time for a change.  I don't foresee any issues with Tannah, but it's going to be a struggle to get Harper to fall asleep on her own and stay asleep.  I checked out "How to Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" from the library, and we are getting ready to begin our sleep training.  I'm not looking forward to it.  I hate having a baby cry when I know that she would stop if I just picked her up.  I keep telling myself that this will make all of us happier in the long run.  Hopefully I'm right.

This post has gotten kind of long, and is kind of a downer, so here are some cute pictures of my beauties.  Hopefully I'll have a post in a few days discussing the miraculous change in our sleep situation.  Fingers crossed!