Thursday, August 16, 2007

Sleep Obsessed

Let's face it - this is not my 1st nor my last time to complain about Matthew's sleep schedule. My little darlin' likes to get to bed late like his momma BUT... (breathing deeply) but he also likes to wake up at the butt crack of dawn. What have I done to deserve this I wonder?!

Matthew has been like this from the get go. I mean it - like pre-baby coming out of the womb. He would get started kicking at around 9:00p... And one would think the kid had a soccer ball in there with him because my ribs and some times I thought my lungs were getting booted SO hard. That kicking, squirming moving baby inside me went on for hours into the night. Finally quieting down around midnight. Only to start back up around 5:00p. It made me laugh at the time... WITH silence during the day... seriously I used to poke my belly at work to prod him to move because he was SO silent ALL. DAY. LONG!

Little did I know - ah to be oh so naive again - that this would chart the course of his relationship with sleep in the "real world"! From day one Matthew disliked sleeping... at night. like the rest of the world... He had to very urgently nurse ALL. NIGHT. LONG. Now my little tot sleeps through the night (most of the time) but getting the kiddo to bed is a major process that both Kevin and I get terribly frustrated about. We have tried all the tricks and quite frankly my bag o tricks is EMPTY.

I have given in... His normal actual go to sleep time is currently 9:15p on average. He current wakey wakey time is 6:30a. Now you may say 'well he naps like a champ - my kid doesn't do that...' I would seriously give up an hour or two of nap time to get him in bed by 7:00-8:00p every night. I do not even mind the early wake up calls if he would only do that.

I have my own issues with sleep. I am pooped during the day (dying for a 2-3 hour nap like Matthew...) but I cannot for the life of me force myself to sleep before 11:30p and I am usually up by 6:00a most mornings. I hate operating on this kind of sleep and no matter how hard I am on myself about changing my ways - I STILL DO IT... since I can remember. No really - I was sneaking the light on in my closet to read at around 5-6. I hated to sleep at night as a kid!

That is stoopid. Seriously, I am dumb. I need to change (I have been saying this for years!) especially when we start to get all serious about baby #2. I also know that eventually Matthew will grow out of this (or not... but he will be able to entertain himself rather than yell "momma, I hear you".) I know that nothing lasts forever but my word I never thought at almost 29 months I would be writing about his sleep habits STILL.

I look at the late bed time as extra time to spend with my son... and I look at the early mornings as training for baby #2... I can only hope that baby #2 does not take after Matthew and I... that he/she sleeps like a dream and that I can teach myself to go to bed and have it stick this time around...

I am sleep obsessed... always have been... probably always will be... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

4 comments:

Tess said...

This sucks. AD wakes up between 5 and 6 am and has been since she was about 3 months old. It's particularly horrific on the weekends.

Christina Schmidt said...

Absolutely! I guess one day I will be trying to drag him out of the bed and I should not complain but still...

It slays me that he won't sleep at night but when I was thinking about writing this particular entry it dawned on me that when he was still just a pregnant belly he was hardly up during the day and was always SUPER active in the evenings... I guess it should not slay me!

jennifer said...

I know a lot of people are shocked when we say that Liam's bedtime is 9pm but the little Fellow insists on this time (you cannot get him to go down earlier) but he does sleep until between 8-9am every day. I do not do mornings well at all & we know we are extremely lucky to have him sleep the way he does...now ask me about his supposed transition to 1 nap a day that appears to rearing its ugly head!

Christina Schmidt said...

Yeah, I have had a really hard time dealing with the 9:00p bed time because that is my TV/workout time damnit! Doesn't he know I need to watch Big Brother and that I need to workout?!

I would give my eye teeth for Matthew to sleep in on the weekends! He has to get up early for work days but doesn't he know what weekends are?! sigh.

My little peach ;)