relentless optimism
Nov. 5th, 2013 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwyI'd never really thought of myself as a optimist or a pessimist until grad school, particularly after we moved to Amsterdam, when I became an optimist out of self-preservation, given the relentless pessimism of both my husband and my supervisor. The trend seems to have continue, at least with respect to child-rearing. No matter what evidence I may have to the contrary, every single night, I go to bed and think "maybe tonight I'll get a good night's sleep!"
The problem is, it turns out true just often enough for me to continually be able to think that tonight's the night. For 8 months or so now, Gwen has pretty consistently slept 7-7, with half hour fluctuations on either side of either number. Not bad at all! However, even a half fluctuation early on the waking side of things really kills me -- and if it's *gasp* 40 minutes, or more, before 7:00, I lose all hope in the future and faith in humanity.
Daylight savings in Europe ends a week earlier than in the US, so we dealt with that two weekends ago -- though she transitioned to the later bed-time right away, this did not correlate to a later wake-up time, instead, it correlated with a half hour or so earlier wake-up time; there were a few mornings when she was up at 5:30/5:45 (kill me now). After about three mornings of that I started putting her to bed at 6:30 instead of 7:00, and that helped tremendously, but even though we're still erring on the early side for bed, she's still rarely sleeping until 7:00. When she gets up before 6:30, I've been trying to put her back to bed; if she won't stay in bed, I'll try bringing her into bed with us. The latter rarely works, since she squirms and wiggles -- but at least she doesn't talk, which is a plus. But occasionally the putting back to bed works; Saturday, she woke up around 5:50, I put her back to bed, she was up again around 6:10, put her back to bed again -- and then she slept until 8:25! (Of course, we then paid for it with a late and short afternoon nap).
This morning, she was up and at the baby gate (we don't have a door to our bedroom, just a gate) at 4:50, which is extremely unusual. I'm not sure she was even entirely awake, and I was pretty confident I'd get her to go back to sleep if I tucked her back in. Sure enough, when I next heard her peremptory "mama!" at the gate, it was a little after 7:00!
I'd totally go back to waking up once in the middle of the night if it meant I didn't have to get out of bed until 7:00.
Then again, I can't complain too much. My sister hasn't gotten 8 hours worth of unbroken sleep in nearly 9 years! (And she's got at least another 2 years to go, I don't think I've mentioned here yet, but I've got another niece or nephew on the way in spring!)
The problem is, it turns out true just often enough for me to continually be able to think that tonight's the night. For 8 months or so now, Gwen has pretty consistently slept 7-7, with half hour fluctuations on either side of either number. Not bad at all! However, even a half fluctuation early on the waking side of things really kills me -- and if it's *gasp* 40 minutes, or more, before 7:00, I lose all hope in the future and faith in humanity.
Daylight savings in Europe ends a week earlier than in the US, so we dealt with that two weekends ago -- though she transitioned to the later bed-time right away, this did not correlate to a later wake-up time, instead, it correlated with a half hour or so earlier wake-up time; there were a few mornings when she was up at 5:30/5:45 (kill me now). After about three mornings of that I started putting her to bed at 6:30 instead of 7:00, and that helped tremendously, but even though we're still erring on the early side for bed, she's still rarely sleeping until 7:00. When she gets up before 6:30, I've been trying to put her back to bed; if she won't stay in bed, I'll try bringing her into bed with us. The latter rarely works, since she squirms and wiggles -- but at least she doesn't talk, which is a plus. But occasionally the putting back to bed works; Saturday, she woke up around 5:50, I put her back to bed, she was up again around 6:10, put her back to bed again -- and then she slept until 8:25! (Of course, we then paid for it with a late and short afternoon nap).
This morning, she was up and at the baby gate (we don't have a door to our bedroom, just a gate) at 4:50, which is extremely unusual. I'm not sure she was even entirely awake, and I was pretty confident I'd get her to go back to sleep if I tucked her back in. Sure enough, when I next heard her peremptory "mama!" at the gate, it was a little after 7:00!
I'd totally go back to waking up once in the middle of the night if it meant I didn't have to get out of bed until 7:00.
Then again, I can't complain too much. My sister hasn't gotten 8 hours worth of unbroken sleep in nearly 9 years! (And she's got at least another 2 years to go, I don't think I've mentioned here yet, but I've got another niece or nephew on the way in spring!)
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no subject
Date: 2013-11-05 11:43 pm (UTC)My oldest has always been a "crack of dawn" child (well, not so much now that she's a teenager!), and I am very very very much not. Fortunately she was usually content to play relatively quietly by herself for a while early in the morning before demanding that I get up.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-06 07:19 am (UTC)We had a *7:20* wake-up this morning, which I'm totally happy with! One thing that did occur to me is that the last two nights I've had the heat on in her room -- maybe she was waking up earlier because she was cold.
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Date: 2013-11-10 04:10 am (UTC)I don't think we'll sleep full nights again until Reuben gets a dog. And even then, on the nights when he has seizures, we'll still go in by him to monitor (I'm hoping for an amazing dog who will alert us for seizures, and also be capable of resettling Reuben alone for his routine arousals so we *don't* have to get up for those. We'll see. Right now the dog is just a dream and not a reality...)
And, miraculously, Matt and I both got 7 straight hours in bed last night!!! No idea how that happened.
But regardless, I have a hard time working up sympathy for your particular situation. ;) Though you can tell Gwen that I'm in full agreement that 4:50am is way too early!
Bummed to be missing you on Thanksgiving. :(
no subject
Date: 2013-11-10 07:29 am (UTC)Never thought I'd see the day where you'd be dreaming of getting a dog...
It is too bad we won't see you while we're back (in particular, Gwen is still fascinated by pictures of Krassi and I can't wait for them to meet), but I can understand the difficulties in traveling!