SLEEP KARMA

Arden didn’t take a nap until she was nine months old. Not one. But the trade off was that she slept through the night, in a crib, in her own room, from day two. And it wasn’t one of those faux “slept through the nights” where you feed your kid at midnight and they wake up at 5:30 AM and you consider that a success. We put Arden down at 8:00 PM (so we could maximize our primetime television habit) and she wouldn’t stir until 8:00 AM. We didn’t know how good we had it until Alex came along…

I was originally concerned about having two girls because I didn’t want to compare them. What if they were similar? What if Alex fell behind Arden’s milestones? Well, it took all of a few minutes to realize these two girls were completely different. Alex was a napper. When she was only six days old we took the girls to lunch and the movies and Alex slept from the second she got in the car seat until long after we returned home from the oh-so-wonderful Madagascar 2. But flipside was that she didn’t want to sleep through the night. She really only got up once a night for a little boob action and she immediately fell back to sleep so it wasn’t that big of a deal. For me anyway, since I wasn’t the one lactating.

Alex continued with this pattern up until the beginning of last week when she started waking up every half hour. It was friggin’ brutal. With no teeth coming in we figured maybe it had to do with the fact that she just started sitting up on her own and when she would wake up she just wanted to sit up and look around. Either way it sucked. Big time. And she wouldn’t nap during the day either, so she was overtired and the cycle would begin again. After three straight nights of this Alex finally tuckered herself out. I put her down at 8:00 PM and it wasn’t until around 11:00 PM that I heard…Arden.

Arden was calling out for Jen so I went into her room to check on her (when she calls out for me, Jen usually goes in. And no, there is no reason why we play the opposite game). So I go in Arden’s room and I’m instantly met by a storm of vomit. Arden was throwing up everywhere. The sheets, the pillow, the comforter, the walls, the rugs and me. We figured Arden had some food poisoning, which caused her to accuse me of poisoning her because I forced her to eat vegetables that night. Yes, it must’ve been that miniscule piece of zucchini I gave her. Anyway, it took about an hour to clean everything up only for her to puke again on the new sheets, the new pillow, the new blanket and the freshly cleaned rug. This went on all night until we ran out of linens and cleaning supplies. But alas Alex managed to sleep through it all.

I could end this post here, but it gets worse. The next night Alex was up again every thirty minutes and this has continued until last night when we finally got her down. That is until Jen started puking around 11:00 PM, which caused Arden to wake up which in turn caused Alex to wake up. In short, I’m currently in a sleep-deprived hell.

In the photo: Alex's first day home from the hospital with big sis Arden.