It’s a beautiful summer – yes, summer! – night in Chicago and in other years I would have been bike riding around, maybe going on a casual date, enjoying happy hour, running along the lakefront, etc. But on this beautiful night in my current (mom) life, I just spent an hour trying (and eventually succeeding) getting Clara to sleep.*

*Don’t feel too bad for me, though, now I’m drinking wine in my underwear, watching The Bachelorette, and writing this blog post! Life is good.

Talk about frustrating! 

I wish I could insert a picture of Clara sleeping into this post, but there’s no way I’m going into her room when she’s napping! I’m not that risky/crazy.

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me brag and then complain about Clara’s sleeping (or lack thereof) over the past few days. To be honest, it’s been all over the place.

I wrote a long-ish post about Clara’s sleep habits 7 months ago, and not much has changed since then except that she’s a bit more predictable now. She has been consistently waking up two times each night, around midnight and 5am. 

The problem is us (meaning me and Tim), of course.

We’ve been working on Clara’s sleeping on and off for months now. The problem is, each time I really think that we’ve made progress, we go backwards. The thing about baby sleep is that consistency is key. Do you know what is not consistent? Our lives! Tim has a really inconsistent schedule and is sometimes home for nap and bedtimes and sometimes travels extensively. Sometimes we take Clara on weekend trips and that always throws our schedule way off.

Sigh, so here we are. With a baby who is still consistently not sleeping through the night!

My little troublemaker.

At first I didn’t care at all, because even though she woke up two times each night, she would immediately fall asleep if I nursed her. Plus, our schedules are flexible. We have a unique situation with Tim’s work schedule and me staying at home and we’re able to alternate naps well into the morning, so we’re not sleep-deprived, thank goodness. However, my nipples are tired, I’m realizing I’m a whole different (and happier) person when I have 7+ hours of consecutive sleep, and now when Clara wakes up she has decided to play – for hours. Oh heck no.

Something needs to change because the other night I was trying to nurse her to sleep and she was crawling around our bed and pulling my hair and cracking up and it was not working for us (even though it was adorable).

So now we’re trying to cut out the first feeding at midnight, and after a few frustrating days, it has worked! Our method is always the same – to comfort her in her crib until she falls asleep. I try not to nurse her to sleep. We try not to rock her to sleep. We try not to take her out of the crib once she’s in there.

Are we perfect at this ‘methodology’? Heck no, obviously not! And it was most-definitely easier to do this whole thing before Clara was able to stand up in her crib and scream at us/guilt us into picking her back up.

I would love to be able to ignore her screams, but I just can’t help it – I worry that she’s hungry or hurting or that something is wrong… I hate listening to her cry! That’s why ‘crying it out’ is not and never will be for us, but I know from listening to others’ experiences that it’s certainly effective (for most little ones)!

I guess I wish we had tried consistently and earnestly to get this whole sleep thing down months ago, before she was old enough to manipulate us, but I keep reminding myself that this is just a phase and before I know it, Clara will not only be sleeping through the night  but sleeping in! That would be my advice to other moms though: attack the sleeping thing at around 6 months, if you can!

Basically, this whole post is just one long update about what we’re working on with Clara. I don’t have advice (except for to start sleep training earlier than 11 months), but I wanted to tell the other moms out there who are still struggling with sleep that I feel your pain and frustration and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not having a baby who sleeps through the night, no matter what age they are! If it works for your baby and your family, it works and no one should tell you otherwise.

I just wish people would stop asking me if she’s sleeping through the night. When asked, I am completely honest and say ‘HECK NO!’ but I wish it wasn’t what everyone fixates on when it comes to babies. I get it, well-meaning family and friends ask because they want to know if I’m getting enough sleep, as they understand how miserable it is to be completely sleep-deprived. However, I still feel pretty judged about the entire thing.

Am I the only mom who gets a bit defensive when asked about her baby’s sleeping habits?