Sleeping solo

We are a house of sleep-challenged folks.  I don't know how it is for everyone, but I've definitely struggled with sharing-a-bed sleep difficulties since being married. I am not sure if it's just that I'm an extremely light sleeper, and even having Kelvin roll over in (our king-sized) bed, tug on the blanket a bit (I know some couples who each have their own blanket), or get up to use the restroom in the middle of the night wakes me from slumber (and sometimes it's hard to get back to a deep sleep).  A quick google search confirmed that apparently I'm not alone (anywhere from a quarter to a whopping sixty percent of people say they sleep more restfully when they sleep alone). I could probably count on one hand the number of nights I've slept more than six uninterrupted hours in the last five years.

Adding kids is a whole separate issue (and I think it makes parents, at least myself, literally sleep obsessed [I'm sure I've written about dozen blog posts about sleep issues]). I have never (personally or professionally) been a fan of co-sleeping (bed- or room-sharing); however, both of our kids did sleep in the room with us for several months especially when they were nursing frequently. Both were in a Snuggle-nest thingie in the bed or in a pack and play for about 6-8 weeks. Iver then room-shared in a pack-and-play until moving to a crib down the hall when he was about three months old, while Niall (the far better sleeper) was in a crib in our bedroom until about 10 months, when he (sleeping through the night) moved in with Iver. I would have loved to move Niall out earlier, but we didn't have a great place to put him and were nervous about the transition to sharing a room with his brother (the not-great sleeper, who finally learned to sleep through the night at 19 months, the age that Niall is now [!] and who did a year or more of 4:40 a.m. up-for-the-day wakings!). (The move actually went great and they both slept until close to 6 a.m. until the last couple of weeks).


I feel it's fair to say that having kids makes one a lighter sleeper (some evolutionary mechanism to prevent a lion from stealing your baby in the middle of the night?). Even when Niall moved down to one night waking, it took me a long time for my body to not wake up at midnight, and even though he's been sleeping through the night for about ten months, my body still wakes me between 2-3 a.m. most nights, about 4-5 hours after I go to sleep, and I struggle with frequent wakings about hourly thereafter, until I get up at 5:30 to shower and get ready for the day.  Even when my kids sleep, I feel like I don't (or I have a dog trying to snuggle next to my chest-- yes, Pepper is allowed in our bed). It's frustrating.

Anyway, back to "sleeping solo"/our recent sleeping arrangement. We had four people sleeping in four different rooms last week.  I was on OB call for six out of eight days/nights last week, and as a result, Kelvin moved to sleep in our guest room so that he wouldn't be woken by my phone ringing in the middle of the night.  Niall recently started doing some early waking (like 5:00), which made us nervous, as Iver (who isn't napping much these days) has been miraculously staying in bed until 6:00 (which has been a great wake-up time in my opinion and was the norm for many months). We're not quite sure the etiology (cold? hungry?), as 5 a.m. seems a bit early, with a 7:30 or 8 p.m. bedtime and ~2-hour afternoon nap. Our sleep bible The Happy Sleeper suggests that you do some cry-it-out (we have the ok-to-wake light in the room) to encourage the child to return to sleep until the acceptable hour, and it may take 2-3 weeks to self-correct (they recommend not moving bedtime later). For a few days, the wake-ups definitely got better, but in the meantime, we moved Iver to the office futon with white noise so that he wouldn't be woken by crying (and Kelvin and I both were sleeping in our respective "rooms" with white noise on.  Iver's even taken to calling our master bedroom "mama's room" now!).

Iver moved back in with Niall last night as the kids' room is warmer, and somehow thankfully slept through 45 minutes of morning crying, but the early wake-up for our youngest continued today. Kelvin will likely be back in "mama's room" for at least a night as I'm not on call (until tomorrow); however, I wonder how all of our sleep quality will be...

Sigh.  How do you get four different people to sleep well with room-sharing and different body rhythms, bedtimes, sleep needs, etc.?   It seems to be an eternal struggle.