And we were on such a good roll, too.
oh my god, go away, sleep regression. I didn’t even know you were a thing until last week, and now you're shaking my confidence in my ability to ACTUALLY BE A PARENT. you're making me want to throw myself through a closed 3rd story window. be gone, sleep regression.
Since his grand entry into our material plane, Brandon has slept in the bed with my husband and I. Despite advice to the contrary by his pediatrician, I decided to walk on the wild side and co-sleep with my baby. Tangent alert: I didn't realize what an immediate threat my husband's habit of throwing bows in his sleep presented to Brandon's health (dude, could you not elbow our baby), but I also underestimated my own motherly instincts for detecting and deflecting those threats. Even in my sleep. I guess I'm just a bad ass momma-bear like that. One night, my husband was up to his old sleeping antics, probably dreaming about fighting crime or whatever, and threw an elbow that nearly connected with Brandon's head. Something compelled me to wake up a moment before this catastrophe almost happened, and I caught his elbow in my palm an instant before it made contact. I was like Neo stopping the bullets. Elbow my kid? Not on my watch, my dude. This scenario hasn't happened since. Everybody gets one.
After Brandon hit four months old, I wondered if now was the time to start transitioning him into sleeping in his crib. Not entirely for his sake, but also for mine. Up until this point, Brandon slept directly on top of me and it was really starting to do a number on my back. I wasn't sure how much longer I could hack it as a borderline cripple trying to stankylegg my way out of bed every morning. And since I breastfeed, nothing is easier than rolling over and popping a boob in his screaming maw in the middle of the night so we can ALL get back sleep. Anyway, he was a textbook awesome baby about the whole thing, it took three days for him to get use to sleeping in his crib without getting all pissed off, just like babycenter.com said he would. That third night after he went straight to sleep without protest, i jogged around my crib humming the theme from Rocky, i was like YO I GOT THIS MOTHERING GAME ON LOCK, SON. You could set your watch to his napping & sleeping routine, because he was sleeping like a goddamned CHAMPION.
Then one day....
He was like screw a nap, MOM.
I was like, alrighty...
Then that night, he was like, SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK.
All night long. And into the next morning.
I was like, SERIOUSLY DUDE WHOSE BABY IS THIS?
Wash, rinse, repeat.
After the third night of his not-sleeping shenanigans, I jumped on the internets at 3 in the AM, trying to figure out what in god's holy name was wrong with my kid. The internet was like, sounds like sleep regression to me, yo.
Sleep regression is a thing that exists, no one told me about it, it is EXCRUCIATING, and all you can do is strap yourself in and ride it out until your kid snaps back to normal.
In other words, sleep regression is the Keyser Soze of baby phenomena. It shows up out of nowhere, messes your whole world up, and then suddenly POOF! It's gone...
