Cradle 'til You Drop

There is one rule to bedtime: Bedtime is a Rule. Ever since baby started to settle to her own daily schedule we have kept her bed time at 11 p.m. Baby slept well and barely woke up for nighttime feedings. Then she became a bit too excited about all the fun new things she sees and learns and it took a really long time for her to fall asleep. She was just really playful and there was no way we could get her to sleep. Sometimes she postponed going to sleep by over two hours. Eventually it just made no sense to keep to the schedule. Baby goes to sleep when baby is sleepy, which could be anything from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m.. We were completely okay with it because it meant less work for us.

However, this free spirit approach backfired. Gradually baby started waking up more and more often during the night. She fell asleep at a random time and woke up at random times (NB! Notice the plural. Random TIMES! ). From sleeping 7-8 hours like clockwork, she had gone back to waking up several times each night. Things were especially bad after triple vaccine shot. Baby slept through most of the day (and cried most of the time when she was awake) and she woke up almost every hour during the night. Four nights later I was happy she slept a whopping three hours in a row! As if the several wake-ups weren't bad enough, she didn't go back to sleep after 8 a.m.

According to some specialists, baby's daytime napping should not be limited in any way because daytime napping only helps babies sleep better at night. Apparently over-sleepyness is one of the typical reasons why babies sleep badly at night. The opposite seems to apply for our baby. She slept so badly at night that she was often over sleepy during the day. She had mood swings - from tired and grumpy to excited and giggling. She skipped one nap after another and when night fell, she went to sleep at a completely wrong time. After analyzing what had changed in recent time it was obvious that we just have to start enforcing the 11 p.m. bedtime rule again.

So yesterday me and Erkki just kept cradling her until she was asleep a little after 11 p.m. And woe and behold she didn't wake up even once until 5 a.m.. I was well on my way to sleeping until at least 10 a.m. ... LOUD NOISE ... I woke up. WTF?! What time is it? And what is that horrible noise?! It was 8:15 and someone was ringing our DOORBELL. It's the kind of doorbell that has such an annoying loud sound that we warn our friends never to ring it. The sound is by far even more annoying at 8:15 a.m.. It was a neighbour who wanted to ask if our radiator is now warm and if we have talked to our upstairs neighbours about airing out their radiator. I admit we didn't get a chance to talk to the upstairs neighbours last night because I only found out about it at noon. I had plans for the evening so the first chance to deal with that problem was after 10 p.m. and I DON'T VISIT STRANGERS AT INAPPROPRIATE TIMES! If I only had known that it was such an urgent matter...

Perhaps tomorrow morning I will get to sleep in.