Every Phase Passes
You've heard the stories…. “After I bought little Max home from hospital he slept through the night... 8 hours, 10 hours, 12 hours sleep every night. I'm so lucky”
I was never that lucky. My children took an eternity to sleep through. My eldest was born premature so she was never asleep in those early days for more than four hours at a time. When she was a few months old, I would cringe every time I was asked if she was starting to sleep through. I was convinced it was never going to happen!
I remember the first time she slept ten hours straight. She was 16 weeks old and I put her down for her 2pm afternoon nap and she slept soundly until 12pm at night, (she must have thought she was in Italy as she was on that time zone). Once I knew she could do it, I tried to replicate that exact experience. She was wearing a lovely pair of eeni meeni miini moh pyjamas and I washed them every day and put them back on her hopeful that she would repeat her sleeping performance. She did it again! But still on Italy time. A few weeks into it and every day fresh pyjamas (always the same) and eventually we got there with a 7pm to 7am. Bliss.
Of course now nearly 12 years later, I know that it had nothing to do with those freshly washed pair of pyjamas every day and had more to do with her sleeping through the night, when she was ready. In those early days in a state of despair a girlfriend came to my rescue with the wise words that “every phase passes”. Your children will not wake you every 4 hours forever, they won't be wearing nappies when they start school and that teddy bear they hold onto all day - they won't be carrying that around with them when they are 21. Every phase passes!
There are some parts of the baby stage, which can be difficult to enjoy. Broken sleep, toilet training, stopping thumb sucking, but like everything in life it doesn't last forever. They will eventually grow out of that stage and move on to another. Every stage passes with time.
Of course once you pass through one phase up comes the next one. As for my eldest there are a lot of things she does well and sleeping 11 hours straight without ever waking me up in the middle of the night is one of them! Yes that phase has passed but now if she'd only tidy her room!!
Louise Gaspar is a Brisbane based blogger and mum extraordinaire
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