Life is a little bit hard right now...

I look back at my old blog posts from when Riley was a baby, and I definitely sugar coated some things. I wish I had written some more honest posts, some more "real life" posts.  You know the ones, not just cute pictures (although cute pictures are nice), not just fun outings and activities, but real every day life.  So, while this post will surely still have pictures of my cute kids, it will also be 100% honest.  About life with these two little munchkins at 6 months and 25 months.

I would say this past month has been the hardest month so far since Jackson was born.  A huge part of that was the sickness that invaded every member of our household.  It disrupted schedules and sleep, it put everyone all out of sorts, and significantly added to my sleep debt.  But we have finally made it through, we're all healthy, but some of us are still not sleeping.  The little ones have been all over the place with sleep lately.  We'll start with Riley:

She was doing really well with sleep right up until she got really sick.  Then she started waking up at night, and because she was so sick, we brought her in our bed so we could keep an eye on her and comfort her.  I'll be perfectly honest... after co-sleeping with her for most of her life, I actually REALLY enjoyed having her back in our bed for part of the night.  And she clearly loved it too, evidenced by the fact that she has had a very hard time going back to her own bed for the full night.  Pre-bedtime routine has gotten longer and longer.  More delay tactics, more demands.  She doesn't want to fall asleep all on her own anymore.  She wants me to lay with her and tickle and snuggle with her until she falls asleep.  And she only wants ME to do it.

Now we know in part she's sort of abusing the system.  She knows how to delay bedtime, she knows how to get what she wants, and she will scream the house down if she doesn't.  BUT, she's also only two years old, and she just wants to snuggle with her mama.  And yes it's a little more effort on my part, yes sometimes I have work to do, but the thought of letting her scream because all she wants is to snuggle with her mama?  I don't know, just seems so WRONG to me at this stage.  So a lot of my evenings these days are spent snuggling with her and telling her stories and watching her breath get slower and deeper as she falls into a deep sleep snuggled right into me.  There are worse things in this world. :)

The trickier thing, is when she wakes up in the middle of the night.  It doesn't happen every night, but I'd say maybe half of the nights she wakes up at some point.  And can you guess what she wants?  One thing.  To come in mama's bed.  Now again, I actually have no problem with her coming in our bed.  She's super snuggly, she goes right to sleep, and get this... SHE SLEEPS IN when she comes in our room.  Like, she sometimes sleeps until 7am (rather than 5am).  So what's the problem, you ask?  Well, we have this other little bubba named Jackson...

Often times when Riley wakes up, I'm either feeding Jackson, soothing Jackson, or he's already in our bed.  And the ONLY time Riley gets jealous or sad about me holding Jackson is in the middle of the night.  All she wants is to snuggle with me, and she is NOT happy if I am tending to him.  Which, as you can imagine, is extremely difficult if I'm feeding him or if I've just spent an hour getting him to sleep, only to have her start crying and wake him up.  Then we have two crying little people, two awake adults, and likely a rough day ahead.  So middle of the night's can be challenging.

Now- Jackson's sleep.  I seriously never know what I'm going to get with him.  That might be the most frustrating part... I just can't figure it out.  Some nights, he's near impossible to get to sleep. Despite all my rocking and shushing and nursing, he just cries and cries until we finally find the right combination of jiggling/bouncing/squatting that puts him to sleep.  Some nights it takes me all of 5 minutes to get him down.  Some nights he likes to sleep on his side in his crib, other nights he needs to be swaddled in his rock n play.  Some nights he'll sleep for a few hours without making a peep, other nights he's up 5 times in the first 2 hours, requiring rocking back to sleep each time.  Sometimes when he wakes, he goes right back to sleep after a feed, sometimes he's up for over an hour.  I seriously never know what I'm going to get.  And I've tried all the usual things- making sure he's not overtired, but also that he is actually tired enough... not overstimulated, not too hot/cold/hungry etc etc...  And as far as I can tell, there's no rhyme or reason for his unpredictable sleep behavior.  Well, I'm sure there IS, but we have no idea what it is.

Lately also, the only thing that can get him back to sleep is nursing.  And that boy is stubborn, so no amount of rocking and walking will soothe him if he's decided he wants to be nursing.  And of course it would figure that I'm battling some serious thrush at the moment, which basically makes breastfeeding EXTREMELY painful.  Like, bite-my-lip-and-clench-my-whole-body-so-hard-I-almost-get-a-cramp kind of pain.  So while I used to be able to lay with him and nurse him in bed while half asleep- currently that is out of the question.  And he pretty much refuses a bottle, so I don't really have the option of giving my boobs a break and giving him pumped milk instead. 

And then there's naps.  We have made one major leap forward... he has managed to move past the single sleep cycle naps (sometimes). He still often wakes after 40ish minutes, but usually for one nap a day I get an hour and a half to and hour and 40 minutes!  Sometimes I have to go in quickly and shush him for a minute, but then he can actually get back to sleep!  Hooray!  But then sometimes it takes me quite a while to get him to sleep, and he no longer ever just falls asleep on his own in the crib, he always requires rocking or bouncing of some sort.

The hardest part for me right now with his sleep is that he is really seeming to be affected by his lack of sleep during his waking hours.  He's more fragile than normal, he's quicker to cry, he wants to be held more.  He cries when I put him down or leave the room (although he doesn't do this for Mark!!).  It's frustrating to know that he's overtired during the day, and not sleeping well at night, and I can't find a solution to get him sleeping better.

He's taking 3 naps a day, but it's rare that I get him and Riley both asleep at the same time for more than 20 minutes, which means I never ever get a nap/rest during the day.  I am pretty much flat out exhausted.  The crazy sleep habits of these two little ones combined with the fact that Jack refuses a bottle means I rarely ever get more than an hour or two of sleep in a row.  My best sleep is on the weekend when Mark lets me sleep in from around 5:45 or 6:00 am to 8:00 or 8:30am.  Yes, my husband is the best.

Anyway.  Life is a little challenging these days.  In addition to the lack of sleep, Mark is working in overdrive trying to finish his thesis, I'm trying to pack up our entire house, run a photography business, and be the best mama I can be two my little ones.  So.  That's our real life right now.