With You — 4 months +

The regression

They speak of a sleep regression at 4 months. What they don’t tell you is the anxiety that you will feel. The anxiety when they don’t sleep when they should. I worked off awake times, I didn’t have a set time of day just a rough guideline of maximum awake time for Rino’s age. The problem: if he passed that maximum I turned into the monster I feared he would become from over-tiredness. It was me who lost it, broke down in tears and screamed. While he happily smiled away and wanted to stay up and play. (I knew that he would not be smiling when it was time for his night bedtime).

And all the comments that people made, that he seems fine. They did not calm me, they did not help him sleep.

Resentment starts to settle in when you reach a point of strain that doesn’t seem to help. Take my baby and bring him back well rested and that will help me, but most times when people have tried to help they have bought him back unrested which just means more work for me as he has now passed that imaginary line of maximum time awake which haunts me 5 times a day.

I know I have been blessed with the support I have had, and any help has been purely for that, to help.

And then it is not only that he sleeps but how and where he sleeps that plagues me. He hasn’t slept in his cot during the day for a few weeks. He is now rolling and sleeping on the bed won’t be safe soon, and that will bring with it a whole new challenge. A change to what he now does which works well 70% of the time.

And while this all bottles up inside me and I start to loss my will to do what I should be and instead curl up in a ball — here is my happy healthy baby boy who is doing so well, having minimal meltdowns and growing and learning and engaging more and more each day.

So where does this internal suffering come from that seems so draining and unnecessary?

It comes from being a mum 24/7. It comes from an accumulation of broken sleep and pushing myself back into a routine. It comes from a move closer to an existence pre-mum. It comes from getting through the first few months of 100% baby focus and into a world that doesn’t revolve around the eat, sleep, poop existence of my little one.

Next month we are moving into our new home, I am starting to explore day care for Rino and talk to work about returning in a few months, and I am trying to return to a normality — but it doesn’t exist in this new life, and sometimes it is just downright hard. Mentally and physically.

The night before he turned 5 months he woke for his 4 am feed, for the third time that night. He wouldn’t settle, or go back into his cot so I sat with him. I sat and rocked him in the breastfeeding chair and I looked at this creation of ours, his innocence (even in disturbing my sleep and sanity). I sat and cuddled him into my chest, head to head as he relaxed in my arms and calmed. In that moment I knew that I could do this as long as was needed, that these moments of getting him to sleep were in reality the treasures of being a mother to this baby boy.

These were our golden moments that I will cherish.