Weekly Banter: Shh.. the baby's sleeping!

Second week of May 2023

💩When your baby doesn’t sleep

Before Reina was born, everyone got their room; my wife took the master bedroom, I took the next room as my home office, and Joanna took her room. It worked out well for us.

We made adjustments when Reina was born, which also worked out fine initially since she slept in the bassinet in our bed for a while.

Also, my mom was here to help us for a month, so I set up a single bed in my office to accommodate her while she stayed. My wife and I planned to have Joanna transition from the crib into the new mattress after my mom left. However, we didn’t execute our plan right away; we were sleep deprived of taking care of Reina and weren’t ready to deal with Joanna walking out of her room during the night.

A few months later —and Reina was still waking up every two to three hours at night— my wife and I decided to put her bassinet into the bed in the office so that we could sleep-train her as we did with Joanna. It was certainly better than having the bassinet next to us, but since she occupied the room, I got kicked out of my office in the evening.

When your baby doesn’t sleep through the night, nothing is more critical than ensuring her sleep.

So I put up with it for as long as possible, getting my work done from my laptop or iPad, but getting kicked out of my room sucked regardless of the reason.

🤦🏻‍♂️Trial and error

Reina grew out of her bassinet in January, and in March, we finally switched Joanna’s crib with Reina’s bed.

Thank God Joanna loved her new bed, but Lord have mercy on me; Reina didn’t like being caged.

And since the crib was much smaller than the single bed, her crying would echo even louder.

On a good day, my wife and I were still feeding her twice; on a bad day, she would throw up everything she took, and hell went loose.

I don’t know how many things we’ve changed to see if she would sleep through the night, and we weren’t sure if it was because she was hungry or a growth spurt or teething. Everything we did, with our best intention, never seemed to be working.

On a selfish note, I also wanted my office back at night. Judge me all you want, but it is what it is.

🫴🏻I want my office back.

‘Maaaahhhhhine!’

Joanna would scream every time Reina touched her toys.

I grew up as an only child, so I don’t know what it’s like to grow up with siblings, but seeing how my privilege has been taken away, I can see where Joanna’s anger comes from.

I selfishly wanted my office back. I spent a lot of effort working on my dream office and hated that I couldn’t use it.

‘Maaaahhhhhine!’

So after a long train of thought, I purchased a giant curtain with movable poles, hoping that the curtain would block the monitor light and be soundproof.

I also applied WD-40 on the door hinge to silence the squeaky noise every time I open the door.

It kind of worked as expected.

Using my office at night wasn’t how it used to be; I had to set everything into a dark theme because it was too bright, and I couldn’t use my mechanical keyboard because it was too loud.

Whatever, I can live with that for now.

So I kept myself as quiet as possible on my computer, and when Reina started crying, I would feed her on the spot and put her back to sleep.

She didn’t seem to mind sharing the room.

‘It’s my office, damn it!’

✨The silver lining

After I installed the curtain, my wife complained that she kept tripping on the curtain pole at night, so I rearranged my desk and the curtain last Sunday afternoon. I didn’t move Reina’s crib, so I wasn’t expecting anything special.

As usual, I went to sleep around 10 pm after I fed Reina, expecting to be woken up around 1 am, but I slept through the night and woke up just before 6 am for my morning workout. I assumed my wife took care of feeding her, but when I asked her about it, she thought I fed her.

‘Wait, what just happened?‘

We were both surprised that she slept through, but we also didn’t want to assume that she would sleep through the night from now on. There were a few nights that she slept relatively well, giving us false hope and destroying our dreams the next day.

Still, there was a glimpse of hope, a silver lining.

😘It might be for real this time.

We put Reina to sleep around 8 pm throughout the week, and she would only wake up once at night.

‘Praise the Lord. We’ve been waiting for this for a year.‘

Her upgraded sleeping schedule has been very consistent over the week. So I’m very hopeful that I’ll get some good sleep from now on.

How was your week?

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Thanks for reading!