A good night’s sleep

Editor’s note: This column originally published Dec. 17, 2017.

Sleep can be hard to come by for this mama for two. From the time my oldest was born to just last night, I have been fighting a losing battle to get a good night’s sleep.

As a new mom, everyone told me to sleep when my baby sleeps because I would be up with her throughout the night. While that was a good thought, my newborn didn’t have a lot of interest in taking long naps but instead took short cat naps about a half hour at a time.

The older she got, the harder it was to get her to go down for a nap and I learned she is a lot like me when it comes to sleeping. It wasn't long before she got the nickname of "night owl" which is how I functioned for most of my life. Getting up to an alarm was and still isn't easy for me and I would much rather work late into the night than get an early start on things.
To compliment my night owl, my youngest daughter came along and was actually a good sleeper. Her quirk was and is that she is an "early bird," always rising well before her older sister.
While my girls are alike in many, many ways, this is definitely an area where they are opposites.

What that means for me, is I have to try to get to sleep earlier and be prepared to wake up earlier than I may want.
For the first couple of years after the girls were born, I was in a sleepless haze. I'm hoping I documented enough things through photos and videos because I was just tired all of the time and my memory of that period is not great.
As the girls got older, they each went through phases of waking up during the night which led to pieced together sleep, which from what I read, isn't ideal.

It was usually a cry of "mom" from the other room that got me up and out of bed at all hours of the night to comfort a little one back to sleep.
I will say I think we had a small period of time where we really hit our stride and both of my kids were sleeping the whole night through. I must have got too spoiled because I thought maybe that would be my sleeping habits for many years to come or at least until I was waiting up for them to come home as teenagers.

Unfortunately, we are once again waking up randomly throughout the night and I am back to getting my sleep in small chunks at a time. I’ve tried reading up on how to help the girls sleep through the night, but so far, nothing has stuck.

I’m hoping we will work through this phase like we have in the past, but for now, I might need an extra massage after twisting to fit a couple of extra girls in to cuddle to sleep.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 
jpierson@newtondailynews.com