Oh, if I had a dollar for every time a friend, or family member, or random stranger at Target asks me this question…

Unfortunately, the answer is still no, by my definition of bedtime to morning, Little Lion is still not sleeping through the night.

This has been a source of a lot of feelings of failure on my part. For whatever reason, I have it stuck in my brain that babies should be sleeping all night by now.  I have struggled with dealing with the fact that LLisn’t there yet. The frequent inquiries from so many people doesn’t help. Despite the fact that I know better in my head, every time someone new asks, a little piece of my Mommy Confidence dies. Maybe it is that all of the sleep training books say so (the promise of sleeping babies must sell lots of copies!). I remember in the sleep deprived days of new motherhood, reading about how, if you do things “right” your baby would be sleeping through the night at 12 weeks old, and thinking that 12 weeks seemed like such. a. long. time.

Now, here we are at 9 MONTHS, and I feel like I might die.

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So I have spent months racking my brain and reading everything I can in an effort to figure out why and come to terms with our situation. See, my biggest struggle is that I feel like we did everything by the book. We have a solid bedtime routine. LL doesn’t have any sleep associations. We put him to bed drowsy but awake. So many mommas tell me about their successes with sleep training, and I am not opposed to giving it a try. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, nothing about LL’s sleep requires training. LL HAS slept through the night before…but it seems that every time we get an uninterrupted night of bliss, something happens that rocks his world, and we have to start over from square one.

According to this thread on the boards, I am not alone. In an effort to better understand my little man, and to hopefully put at ease some of you other sleep deprived mommas, I have compiled a list…

Reasons my baby isn’t sleeping through the night (that sleep training can’t help)

1. Hunger- Despite a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation on the internet, even the most strict sleep training advocates (Babywise included) insist that if your baby is hungry, you feed him! Well, this has always been our biggest struggle in the sleep department. LL gets hungry in the middle of the night. Even when he eats well during the day, and even though we have started solids, he still needs a few ounces to hold him over until morning. We have tried night weaning before, but unfortunately just when he finally got to where he didn’t need to eat at night (for two whole days) he started crawling.

2. Motor Milestones – I can’t remember where I read this (so I can’t quote a source) but our brains require sleep to move information from short term memory into long term memory. Babies spend so much time during the day soaking in their surroundings and practicing new skills…night time is when those skills are solidified into mastery. So, it is not unusual for babies to practice said skills in their sleep, or when they wake up in the middle of the night. REM sleep is actually a very active period of sleep. Adults have a mechanism that paralyzes their muscles during REM sleep, but infants have not yet developed this, so their bodies are frequently in motion as they sleep. (You can read more about the science of infant sleep here if you are interested). Unfortunately for us, immediately after LL was FINALLY able to go all night without a feeding, he learned to sit, and then crawl, introducing a whole host of reasons why sleep is overrated as far as he is concerned.

3. Teething – There is nothing worse than waking up to “pain screams” from a little one. Seriously…they are the worst. There should be no crying it out during teething nights, that is for sure.

4. Colds/Ear Infections – We have been very fortunate that LL has only been sick once in his 9 months of life, but that week was really hard on him. Stuffy noses mean that sucking on a paci is impossible (breathing is non-negotiable I guess…) so one huge method of comfort was out, and laying flat with an ear infection can be very painful.

5. Daytime Distraction – Unfortunately, even though at one point he was okay without a feeding at night, once he started crawling he had absolutely no interest in slowing down long enough to eat during the day. At one point he was only eating about 15 of his typical 26 ounces during the day, and making up for it with extra wakings at night. Fortunately we are coming out on the other side of this and are close to night weaning again, but I have a feeling walking is going to cause us to revert back once again.

.  .  .  .  .

I am learning to accept that I do not have a whole lot of control about any of these things. I can provide comfort, of course, but I cannot “sleep train” my way out of any of them. I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that most babies (73% of the ones whose moms responded on the boards) do not magically start sleeping through the night around 4 months of age like the books suggest, even with sleep training strategies in place.

For those of you who lucked out, or tried really hard to get onto a schedule or sleep train and were fortunate enough that it worked, I don’t hate you! In fact, I couldn’t be happier for you!  I just hope you pay it forward and use your extra energy to give extra hugs (and coffee) to a friend who isn’t so lucky. And if your friend’s baby isn’t sleeping all night yet, it probably isn’t her fault.

It isn’t because I did something “wrong” and it doesn’t mean my child will be a “terrible” sleeper for life. It just means that for now, my role as Mommy doesn’t allow for a solid 8 hours of sleep just yet. LL needs me in the middle of the night. He can’t get up and get himself a drink yet. He can’t soothe himself through ear infections and teething pain. Seriously, how badly must that hurt to a little guy who has never really felt pain.

That said… I know I am not alone. So…. any suggestions for dealing with the sleep deprivation?