Sleepy Head

To continue with Ann's sleep book blog tour I really wanted to post a photo of J sleeping. The one I wanted cannot be found (searching many, many discs, I can't seem to pinpoint the original one I wanted. With my luck I will find it tomorrow) but, this one will do just the same. Every time I look at J sleeping, I just want to cuddle and cozy up with him. I also want to kiss him and fall asleep myself.

Although J did not technically sleep through the night until he was a year and a half old and we had moved to a new house (hence, no taxi driving neighbours to wake him up all night long), he was all in all not a bad sleeper. Or maybe I should be more specific, he slept and I accepted my fate that I was not going to have a lot of sleep for a while. This acceptance of mine made all the difference in the world. I don't know if I will ever get to have another baby and go through this all again, so I wanted to cherish and relish every moment possible. Whether it was a sleepless night or a no napping day. In the grand scheme of things it was really such a short amount of time that now that I do get eight hours of sleep a night it seems like such a long time ago really.

I didn't let it bother me when he woke up every two hours, I tried hard to accept my fate of waking up at 5am every day, even when I did have to go into work. Our nap schedule was such that he slept when he was tired and woke when he wasn't. Some days were hard when I was trying to get work done, but all in all, I loved it. I still love that J will fall asleep when he has just plain had enough, and I love that when he gets up at 5am, he crawls in between Hubby and I and goes back to sleep for another hour. I love that he snuggles his head under my chin and puts his cold feet on my legs to warm up. I love every little thing about him sleep or not.

One day, in the not so distant future, he will be kicking me out of his room when I come in to wake him up. I accepted the baby I was given and loved every minute of being a new Mom (ok, almost every minute, if Ann could write a book on how to get back into pre-preggo shape, now that is what I needed). And if I never get the chance again to be a new Mom, I have the best memories of nights spent nursing him, cuddling with him on his bed, watching him sleep in his crib, all those memories are priceless and I wouldn't trade them for the world.

Oh yes, and if I had had Ann's Sleep book when I was a new Mom, I wouldn't have felt so terrible that my child woke up every two hours. I started telling people who asked that he did indeed sleep through the night, cause they all had an opinion of what I was doing wrong. Little did they know that I was doing nothing wrong at all. That is just the way he slept.