Sleep, or lack thereof.

Here's what's going on in my world (this is long-winded, but I just feel like writing!):
Here I am on baby #2 and I still have no clue what I'm doing. Someone asked me the other day, "Oh, you have 2 kids... any advice on getting them to sleep through the night?" The answer is a resounding, "NO!" After Chase started sleeping through the night at 8 months, I thought I had it all figured out. Up until that point, I had been nursing him every time he woke up because I honestly just thought he was waking up because he was hungry! So naive! I mean, really... like every 2-3 hours just like a newborn? Once I realized this error, I then struggled with letting him cry. I made the mistake of reading a book called, "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" (which really is a great book in an ideal world), and so from then on out I felt so guilty when he cried because I thought he'd be traumatized for life. SO finally, after reading some more and talking to lots of other moms, I decided to go for it. I sat up all night with him while he cried his little heart out. It was probably one of the most difficult things I had ever done, because it goes against everything your "mom instinct" is telling you, which is: "If your baby's crying, pick him up! Comfort him! Nurse him, rock him, sing to him, tell him that he's safe!" Somehow I hit that breaking point where I was so exhausted from all of the sleepless nights that I was finally able to just do what I needed to do and let him cry. And then, miraculously, he slept through the night from then on out!! SO, of course, I thought... "I will do this MUCH earlier with the next one! I'll be sleeping like a champ!" And here I am, with a 7 month old baby who wakes up every 2-3 hours at night and I'm thoroughly exhausted!

I thought I was so in control this time. First of all, Siena started out much better than Chase ever did. She was sleeping 10pm-5am at 3 months, which was like heaven. Somewhere along the way, though, she started waking up more and more. And just like before I'd nurse her back to sleep because it was quick and it was easy. Of course, I tried to rock her, sing to her, etc... but for some reason, that just doesn't cut it in the middle of the night. She wants milk, and she wants it NOW. And how in the world do you know when they're really hungry or not? All of the books will tell you that by 5 or 6 months they are good to go all night without eating. So at 2am, your head tells you not to feed them, but your heart says, "but what if they really ARE hungry!?" So the cycle begins and it just gets worse and worse, until finally one night you're up for the 5th time and in tears because you're so tired you can't even remember what year it is. (I have to insert here that yes, Eric is perfectly willing to help, and he does help when Chase wakes up and wants to be tucked back in, but Siena completely refuses the bottle and just gets hysterical when Eric walks in the room, but I have to give him some credit for trying!) Based on the knowledge I had from Chase, I decided very early on that I would let Siena cry it out if I thought she was truly not hungry. So around 5 months I started doing that, thinking, "this is it, all I have to do is let her cry 1 night like Chase and she'll sleep like an angel!" But did it work? NO! Not this time! I've let her cry it out I don't know how many times and it only makes things worse... she ends up waking up again in an hour instead of 2 hours and she's super fussy during the day. Every time I wake up now it's a huge debate in my head, "Do I go in there and feed her or should I let her cry? Is she hungry or is she just waking up out of habit? Is it January or September?" I mean, I think she needs to eat at least once a night, don't get me wrong. I'm not asking for 12 hours of sleep here. I just think we need a happy medium. Can we go back to just waking up once or twice a night?

I truly pity any other moms out there who have been through this or will go through this. It feels just awful not to know what to do and to be so tired! Even though it seems like everyone else I know has babies that sleep all night, I cling to this little statistic that I recently read: "A survey of parents found that fewer than one in six 6-month-olds regularly sleeps though the night, and some wake as many as eight times a night!"