August 26, 2009

That was the last night my son had a decent nights sleep. We were on a plane headed to my home province of Newfoundland. He slept the entire 9 hour flight, never even woke when I changed him or fed him. Oh how I bragged about how good he was on the flight, and only 3 months old too! Life's funny that way...
In short, my son didnt sleep, hardly ever, for the next 17 months of his life. He would go to bed, sleep for maybe an hour then be up every 30-45 minutes screeching. This would last the entire night. Even when he did sleep he was completely restless. Constantly rooting around, never stopped. You'd think he'd be tired and cranky the next day. NO. The only tired and cranky ones were dear old Mom and Dad. The hardest part was we really dont think anyone believed us. Oh how we got tired of hearing "no child sleeps through the night." We didnt have a child that woke once or twice a night. We had a child who apparently didnt need sleep! Doctors were of no help at all. And since both sets of grandparents lived on the other side of the country we didnt even have anyone to pawn him of on for a night so we could rest.
We devoted our lives to finding a way to get him to sleep, even just for 2 hours. The internet uncovered nothing except other parents going throught the same thing looking for the same answers. We tried every old wives tale in the book, aside from giving him whiskey of course. In the end we decided to call it a form of colic and just learn to deal with it instead of trying to fix it.
Remarkably, that actually seemed to help. At 16 months old, over a year of no sleep, we decided to buy him a double bed. That way, we could take turns sleeping in the room with him and at least every second night ONE of us would get a decent nights sleep. What a difference it made to our lives! We became more clear headed and had so much more patience. We had fun with our son during the day instead of just floating through it all zombie like and not remembering how we did it.
Finally, around 20 months old we realized that our son was actually sleeping quite well. Maybe only waking 3 times a night and sometimes not at all. So we decided to sleep in our own bed TOGETHER. Something we had not done in forever. You have to understand of course, that this was a hard decision to make. Were we finally ready to sacrifice sleeping again? Amazingly, after about 2 weeks we found we were only getting up with him once a night! And now at 2 years 2 months sometimes we even get to sleep in our own bed the entire night!
What a journey it has been. That we survied it is a feat in itself. Are we in a hurry to have a second child? Not on your life. However, I am considering going around to the high schools and giving my story. Scare the pants of those teenagers. Can't think of any better birth control then that!

And here we are at the airport after just arriving!