Sleep Baby Sleep

Hudson hit a HUGE milestone this past week: he slept through the entire night. Now, to most of you parents who have easy/wonderful/natural/trainable sleepers, you probably cannot fathom, understand nor grasp what I am talking about. But believe me when I say that Hudson is the worst sleeper I have ever encountered (I thought Elle was difficult, but she was nothing compared to this boy).

Hudson since the wonderful age of two weeks has had difficulty sleeping. He has never had the capability to sleep and stay asleep. Even at two weeks, he was impossible to get to sleep; and if by chance I actually got him to sleep, he would only take a catnap. We tried everything to keep him asleep, but once his eyes opened it was over. Hudson has this knack that if his eyes open—even slightly—he is fully awake.

For the longest time he would sleep for a little stretch at night, and then wakeup for two entire hours. And when I say wakeup, I mean it. He was not crying, he would talk and play and wreak havoc. And there was no hope of him going back to sleep. He was awake and he wanted to play. But after the full two hours—sometimes less—he would go back to sleep, if I rocked him. But that is not the end of it, for he would then wakeup again at 4:00 AM—for good. No matter what I tried or did, Hudson refused to sleep past 4:00 or 4:30. He was awake and there was nothing I could do about it.

I really thought I might go crazy, but just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, he started sleeping. He now sleeps through the night, with only an occasional wakeup. But these occasional wakeups are not really wakeups—he cries out in his sleep, and I simply touch his back and shush him back to sleep. But the really good news is that he sleeps in until 6:30. Hallelujah.

Now I’m sure many of you are appalled and think that I did everything wrong. But the only thing I can tell you is that you have no idea. He just simply stunk—and still sometimes does—at sleeping. We tried everything we could think of; but when it came down to it, he just had to be ready and willing to sleep.

I do not look back on those sleepless nights with fondness, but I know I learned a lot in the past seventeen months. It definitely is the harder things that teach one the most.