Sleep-Stories

When will my baby sleep through? When?

Why is it that when you most need caffeine to cope with sleep deprivation, you can’t have it? Unless you want a baby that is awake more than it is already (see my Tweets over there on the right, where I’m already complaining). Every one of my children was up at some point last night. [...]

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Croup, croup and then more croup

I’m on the boat at nearby Longleat stately home and one of the seals has flip-flopped itself onto the deck and is barking at me for the cup of fish I am holding in my hand. It keeps barking, its tail knocking incessantly on the deck. ******** I stumble out of bed to find a [...]

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Teaching a baby to sleep by himself

Controlled crying. Two words that strike fear into my already overly-emotional heart. Last night my fifteen month old’s screams of abandonment and indignation filled the monitor airwaves for nearly an hour leaving me shaken and feeling rotten to the core. For I have a secret: in order to move Ben out of my bed and [...]

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Sleep deprivation and its fallout

Nightimes around here are like an affair with the bad boy of the neighbourhood: they seduce you with longing but leave you feeling tricked and used. The dark hours lying awake, crushingly, stupendously tired but forced awake by a crying or hungry baby or by a toddler with nightmares or coldiness, are desperate and there [...]

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Sleep Training

These are the two words which strike the most fear into my heart. Those and Controlled Crying. And possibly Spread ‘Em. Youngest Son, now a bouncing six-month-old, is refusing to go to sleep without being rocked in my arms. So three times a day you can find me pacing the hallways while he decides whether [...]

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I slept so long I may almost have had a dream

Last night I had seven hours sleep. Unbroken. No feeding, no dirty nappies, no running to get sick bowls. Yesterday evening while putting the boys to bed I was almost asleep while sitting on Eldest Son, Harry’s, bed; I was upright but in that reverie state that often comes before sleep. I probably looked like [...]

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