Sleeping through the night...

Finley is just coming up to 7 months old, from the day he was born one of the first questions I always got asked was 'how is he sleeping?'. Those of you will babies will probably have been asked this question too on numerous occasions. The truth being a newborn sleeps when it wants to sleep and in my case most of that sleeping was done during the day!  I still haven't forgotten how much of a killer sleep deprivation is. I was in a zombie state for the newborn weeks, i was told to 'sleep when the baby sleeps' well this would be all well and good but if I had done that then I probably would never had had a shower or fed myself. As soon as Finley was a sleep it was action stations rushing about to do all the things I needed to do to make myself feel slightly normal!

Finley sleeping on Dad 3 weeks old

The holy grail was 'sleeping through the night'. I had lots of mummy friends telling me that their little one was sleeping through from 6 weeks old and that they get 12 hours sleep a night blah blah blah.  I didn't get this, I still had 2 night feeds a night to do, I still had a 3am wake up cry. I was told by the health visitor that as Finley was a big boy that he should be managing to get through the night without a feed.

I thought that I would never witness a 'sleeping through the night' BUT it did come, it came with the weaning and at 6 months (3 weeks into being weaned) Finley decided he would sleep and in fact he decided he would sleep from 7pm to 7.30 am! The first night this happened I didn't get the unbroken sleep I craved, I was checking his breathing every hour wondering why he hadn't woken up and wondered why the bottle I had prepared out of habit wasn't being called for. He woke up giggling and I had finally realised that this mythical 'sleeping through the night' did exist. I can also happily say that he has continued to sleep through, we have had the odd night when he has woken up with teething pains but he is soon settled. So my fellow mummies it will happen but each baby takes their own time.  I must also point out that several of the baby books I was given say that sleeping through is classed as 6 hours unbroken sleep - not much good if these 6 hours start when baby has gone to bed early evening and you get woken at 1 am!

So here's to reaching that mile stone and celebrating the luxury of sleep!