Breaking Bad Habits

This sleep thing is driving me nuts. (Did I just hear a chorus people say/think, "Oh dear Lord, not another post about sleep or the lack of sleep."?)

Let me say right here that I know this whole thing is my fault. I know. I do.

But something has to give. I’m so tired of waking up three, four, eleven times a night because I’m across the room instead of RIGHT BESIDE Olivia.

I mean, come on! Most parents aren’t even in the same room as their kids and those kids sleep fine, all night long (so I’m told.)

I know I respond too quickly. I always have. I make waking up and then waking ME up too pleasant and they like my presence. I know that.

But I’m tired. I’m so, so tired. I’ve been tired for going on nine years.

So last night I tried. I tried not to respond. When Olivia woke up for the first time at 9:45, I told her gently from the twin bed I was in, “I’m right here. Lay back down and go back to sleep.”

She looked at me with sleepy confusion. Usually, when she sits up, I go to her and lay down beside her and we snuggle up and she goes right back to sleep. But I don’t want to do that anymore. If she wakes up, I want her to roll over and go back to sleep without any help from me.

Consistency is the answer. I know that too.

See, I’m a good parent in my head. I know the right things to do. But then I get tired and I get annoyed and I just want them to go to sleep and leave me alone for seven hours. Just seven. At this point I’m not even trying to get the girls into their own room so much as I just want them both to sleep all night without needing comfort, scratching, snuggling from me.

They’re five and almost nine, for Pete Sakes! I really don’t think it’s asking a lot for them to go to sleep and STAY asleep, or at the very least, just go the heck back to sleep without calling out to me.

So last night, I told her to lay down and go back to sleep. She did so, but I could tell she wasn’t happy about this. And who can blame her? All these years, this soft, gentle mama was there at her beck and call and suddenly, mama doesn’t want to be there. I really don’t blame her for protesting.

However, I also just want to sleep. So she laid back down and closed her eyes, but she was restless.

She woke up again a half hour later. And again, I told her I was right there in the room and she needed to go back to sleep.

An hour after that, she woke up and didn’t just look around, she sat up and cried. I told her firmly, “Go back to sleep, Olivia.”

She cried harder.

I stood (laid?) firm, telling her, “Just lay down. I’m right here. You’re fine.”

Then? Well, she continued to cry and I got petulant. At my five year old. I’m not proud. I told her, “Livie, I don’t want to come over there. I want to stay here and sleep. Please go back to sleep.”

And she continued to cry. So I got up and I stomped around the foot of the bed and I laid down next other and rolled over and pretended she wasn’t sniffling next to me. I was a brat.

But I also didn’t want to make my presence too pleasant for her. See, I want her to not need me next to her for her to go back to sleep. And I reasoned, in my bratty, sleepy state of mind, that if I just laid there but didn’t rub her back or hold her, then sure, I was THERE but I wasn’t so much present.
Make sense?

No?

Not to me either. I was just tired and if feels like I’m always tired and so I did what I thought I had to do so we could all get some sleep.

I’ll try again tonight. I hope to be more patient and less petulant. I hope the be the firm mom instead of the bratty mom. I hope we can all just sleep, comfortably, soundly, uninterrupted.

I tell myself it will take consistency. I have to keep working at it. They won’t need me in the same room/bed when they’re 18 and 22, right? Please tell me I’m right about this. Please.