On Sleeping and Coffee Brewing

I can admit it – I occasionally suffer from Superiority Complex.  There are times when I nod politely but sneer a little mentally.  I’m sorry, but it happens.  I’m not always a good person.

Take childrearing.  Before I had children, I was not one to voice my opinions on childrearing, since I had no experience to speak of.  And after we had Berry Boy, I felt that I had some experience, but not enough to qualify me as an *expert* (since I’d only had one) and so I often kept my mouth shut then too.  But in my head…oh ho, that was a different story.

Berry Boy was (in retrospect) a remarkable easy baby.  At 7 weeks, he began sleeping from 11pm to 5am, fed and went back to sleep until 8 or 8:30am.  He did that for a week, and then started skipping the 5am wakeup and snoozed right on through to 8ish.

He gave up the soother himself at one year, and the bottle followed shortly after.  He didn’t bat an eye for either.

So when I would hear mothers talking about how their 2yr old was still not sleeping through the night and was still taking a bottle at 2am and still addicted to the soother, I would smile sympathetically but mentally shake my head at them.  Obviously they were doing something wrong, the poor things.

If they would have just read “Secrets of the Baby Whisperer”, then they would know not to allow their child to sleep on them/sleep in their bed with them/feed them to sleep etc etc.  They would know that they had to teach their child to fall asleep in his or her own bed, independently, and not with a “prop” like a swing or soother.

*cough cough*

Yes, and then we had Berry Baby.

He wouldn’t sleep in his cradle or his crib for longer than 1 hour, so he slept on my chest/in his carseat/in his swing where he would sleep for about 2.5hrs.  I nursed him to sleep, rocked him to sleep, hooked him on his soother, and fed him if it was *time* or not, just to stop the crying.  I weaned the soother, and it was replace by the bottle.  I weaned the bottle, and it was replaced by the sippy cup.  I sleep trained, with limited success.

And here we are, 4 months away from his 2nd birthday, and he has yet to sleep through the night on any kind of consistent basis.  I almost can’t stand the irony of it.

How does that crow taste, you ask?  Bitter.  Very very bitter.  With a side of humble pie, and no ice cream.

So to all the moms that I unintentionally sneered at (in my head, quietly, to myself), I apologize.

With great sincerity.

You weren’t wrong, you were surviving. And/or desperate.  And/or sleep deprived.

All I have left to say is, I am daily thankful that God created a person who had the genius to discover the coffee bean, and that if said coffee bean is roasted to perfection, ground up and brewed with hot water, it will make a magical drink with the power to pull an exhausted mother out of her bed to tend to her overly energetic children.