Taking time out together while baby sleeps

By Jess

It's Monday night and Dan and I (Jess) are lying on the couch, with our 5 1/2 month son, Ariel, sleeping peacefully (on his side* on the monitor next to us). There's half packed cardboard boxes around us as we have a week until we move houses, and although it's the perfect time to be packing, we are both so exhausted we aren't making the most of it. I'll have to get to it tomorrow, in Ariel's nap times. Hopefully he sleeps longer than one sleep cycle to give me a chance to do it!

We are first time parents, and absolutely loving this whole parenthood journey so far, but are also usually quite tired... and a little sleep deprived! Ari used to be a fairly good sleeper... up until two months ago he would sleep from around 7pm til 3am, then 6 or 7am.

Then he went through the dreaded 4 month sleep regression, sometimes waking every 2 hours, sometimes every 45 minutes during the night. It was utterly exhausting, and something we were at a loss to explain why. I'd been to a council run day program on sleep and settling, and we follow the feed play sleep routine during the day, and put Ari in his cot awake so he could learn to settle by himself. Finally, now we are back to two night feeds, although he may wake sometimes twice and we need to resettle him.

Sleep is a common topic with our friends who've just had bubs, and within mothers groups. While a few sleep nurses we've spoken to tell us that theoretically, our little boy could sleep through the night now, in reality, that seems a bit down the track for us. And that's OK. We have a generally happy little boy who is a delight to be around, and teaching us new things about ourselves in the process. Anyway, we should go to bed as I'm sure as soon as I fall asleep I'll hear the crackle of the monitor signalling someone's awake.

Posted in: Baby 21-26 weeks In this together Mums Your needs