dreaming of sleeping

The owlet turned 10 months old yesterday. I cannot even fathom this. Time has really flown by. It's so ridiculous. It feels like just the other day he could barely hold his head up, and now he's crawling around with a vengeance and getting in to ev-er-y-thing.

He's also STILL not sleeping through the night. We've been on a new routine where he wakes up at 10:30, 2:30 and 5:30. Everyday. Like clockwork. Babies can't tell time my ass. He sure seems to be able to.

We have been trying something new lately. Thanks to my library job, I checked out a book called "The Sleep Lady's Goodnight, Sleep Tight" book. It's sort of like no cry sleep, without the picking up and gradual settling down. He's 10 months old. He needs to learn how to self-soothe, without cry it out. We're making a little bit of progress. He still woke up 3 times last night, but at least I was able to sing him back to sleep, rather than having to pick him up. Yay!

Last night though, as I was lying in bed, waiting to see if he would stay asleep or start screaming again, slowly falling into sleep, I remembered how it was when he was a teeny tiny little guy, and I would dream that I had fallen asleep holding him or nursing him.

I'd wake up when he cried, and would look around for him, under the blanket, in my arms, sometimes even moving my arms as if he was still lying there.

Ahh, sleep deprivation. It does wonderful things to the mind, doesn't it?

On more than one occasion, I even asked the hubs to reswaddle him, because I had heard him fussing, only for the poor hubs to get out of bed and check on the owlet who was not unswaddled, nor was he crying.

I don't think I imagined way back then that we'd still be having problems with sleeping. That the owlet would still be waking up so often during the night.

The hubs keeps reminding me that we're not alone in this. That there are tons of babies who don't sleep through the night, because if there weren't there wouldn't be all these books about helping kids and toddlers to sleep better.

I like this thought. Especially when I hear that a friend's baby is sleeping through the night at just a week old. (I'm really happy for her, by the way, but seriously?)

One of these days we'll all be sleeping better and all this will be but a distant memory. Something I look back on fondly.

At least I hope so.