Happy Birthday Luca! You are totally gorgeous and I love you despite the fact that you still insist on waking numerous times throughout the night and screaming at the top of your lungs till someone comes and helps you back to sleep.

The last twelve months have taught me that life is all about perspectives.

Luca has a fantastic appetite, he loves people, he is a happy kid, he’s healthy, active and bright, and he’s pretty damn cute as well.

So he doesn’t sleep that well? It could be worse.

Have I become used to endless nights of broken sleep? Absolutely not. But I have got better at dragging myself out of bed each morning. And I’m still hopeful that one day, preferably one day soon, he will start sleeping through the night.

And if he doesn’t? Well, he will never have to share his birthday presents with an annoying little brother or sister. And honestly, part of me doesn’t think that’s such a bad idea… Can you guess which part?

Obviously this shot was staged

I almost wrote this entry at nine thirty this morning, full of joy and optimism, lucky I waited.

Last night things were much quieter all round. Luca woke less and some of the other babies didn’t wake at all. But today has been a day of mixed results. This morning Luca went down for his first sleep in under ten minutes (a fifty minute improvement on yesterday) and with hardly any protesting. I was over the moon. But unfortunately he woke fifty minutes later and refused to go back to sleep.

Then this afternoon I spent a very frustrating hour and fifteen minutes trying to get him to sleep before giving up. I think he figured out that if he cried he would wear himself out, so instead he decided to play with the curtains and look around the room chatting happily to himself. I think this was more frustrating than listening to him cry.

Other people seemed to have more success. The angel-faced banshee slept for two and a half hours this afternoon, the little girl Luca’s age slept for two lots of two hours, even Violet Beauregarde slept without protest, and she slept twelve hours overnight without waking.

My kid is truly hard arse!

In this particular sleep school the babies/kids are divided into two sections according to their age. We are in the wing with the older kids, five in total. What I’ve noticed being in here is that the older the babies get, the louder they scream. And oh how they scream!

Last night Luca woke about three or four times before I went to bed. Then he woke again, just before midnight. Just as I got him back to sleep and all was quiet (nothing was stirring, not even a mouse) all hell broke loose. The nine month old baby down the hall started up, then the one next to her went off, then the boy next to us (who looked like an angel but had lungs like a banshee) got started and then, lucky last, Violet Beauregarde let loose with a howl and the walls literally began to shake.

It’s a bit like being on a roller coaster. Most of the time you are either screaming in terror with your eyes closed and your arms flung up in the air or you are gripping the sides and gritting your teeth in anticipation of the next drop. Currently we are all hanging on and waiting for tonight’s storm to hit.

I think the first thing everyone here does is check out the other babies (and parents) and work out which ones to stay away from.

I didn’t have to look hard. A certain little miss, two and a half years old but with the attitude of an angsty teenager, made herself known in no uncertain terms. ‘GET OFF! GET OFF! GET OFF! NO! THAT’S MY SLIDE! And then she attempted to stomp on Luca’s tiny inquisitive fingers.

Ahh, the joys of other people’s children. It’s almost like being on a Greyhound bus.

**correction! I just watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and realised that the above resembled Veruca Salt not Violet Beauregarde. She was most definitely a ‘bad egg’.

After the crushing experience that was our very brief and fleeting success with Elizabeth Pantley’s No Cry Sleep Solution, I decided that it was impossible to make a long-term change to Luca’s sleep patterns without professional help. I also spoke to several people whose babies had just gone from waking repeatedly throughout the night, to sleeping through, thanks solely to a short stay at sleep school.

Interestingly one of the recommendations came from the same person who, months ago, enthusiastically recommended I read the book Save Our Sleep. It seems Tizzie Hall’s routines were no match for a teething baby. And it also seems the book was no match for a can of petrol and a cigarette lighter. I’m keeping mine for old times sake.

So after finally coming to terms with the fact that I wasn’t able to ‘fix’ Luca myself, I spent the next month desperately hoping I would get accepted.

Here are my tips for getting into sleep school;

1. Apply to get in straight after the doctor says ‘It’s a boy!’ or ‘It’s a girl’ or in our case, ‘So, what have you got there?’

I left it way too late and by the time I really needed it (and I mean REALLY needed it) it was quite devastating to find out that might be months before I got a place, if at all.

2. Be creative with your application; embellish, expand and exaggerate the truth.

The majority of sleep schools are publicly run and covered by medicare, which makes them free, and this means everyone wants to get in. To make sure the most desperate cases get seen first they employ a priority system, which means unless you are a heroin addict, alcoholic or just seriously messed up, you go straight to the back of the queue – and what a queue that is!

3. Resist the urge to reach down the phone and strangle the über cheery receptionist with the high lilting voice who tells you it will be at least another week before anyone even rings you back.

These people are obviously employed to reduce the number of people applying for admission. They do this by attempting to sap your will to live and your determination to get to the front of the queue. At first I simply thought they were unsympathetic imbeciles, but apparently this is not so.

4. Say yes to everything and don’t ask any questions.

The bookings person will eventually phone you, and when they do, don’t say anything that might make them rethink the place they are about to offer you. Don’t question their methods, or the facilities, or even their name if you didn’t happen to catch it the first time around. Just write down that date and thank them profusely.

Then hang up the phone, go to the calendar, and start marking off the days…for me, this is only 2 more! It’s almost like waiting for Christmas.

Are you a kind and caring friend, family member, workmate, acquaintance or total stranger on the street about to give the parent of a non-sleeping baby your two cents? Let me give you some advice. Don’t! You don’t know what you are taking about, you can’t know what you are talking about and the person you are about to bestow with your obviously insightful words of wisdom probably hasn’t slept in months and may well punch you in the face. And so they should.

Unless of course you have had a non-sleeping child yourself and somehow managed to make them sleep. In which case we want to know all your tricks, all your insights, all your middle of the night (eyes barely open baby screaming for the third time this hour brain not functioning considering walking out of the house in pajamas and never coming back) secret manoeuvres.

This information is useful, or at least gives us hope. And hope is the only thing keeping us from running screaming from the house in the middle of the night. That and the complex web of locks and latches that is just too difficult for our fried brains to contemplate at three in the morning.

Useful information and hope was something I was expecting (not unreasonably, I think) when I spoke to my long time GP about Luca’s sleep issues. Instead what I got was a slightly condescending smile, a recommendation to try control crying (which I explained I had already tried and had not found useful) and an exclamation ‘You’re not doing anything stupid like letting him sleep in your room, are you?’

Now call me Pinky McKay (a whole other story), but I would’ve expected GP’s today to be a little more open-minded and unbiased. And this one’s a woman.

What if I was co-sleeping with Luca? God forbid if I was bed sharing. Probably the fact that I occasionally practice a little baby wearing would’ve been enough to have her send me home with the latest copy of Save Our Sleep.

Now my search for a sleep theory has resulted in a new search. The search for a new GP. Preferably one with a little insight and understanding.

Sayonara Dr Wheeler. Let’s hope all your children learnt quickly.

Our success with Elizabeth Pantley’s No Cry Sleep Solution lasted for exactly four days, or nights to be more precise. And then everything went to the shits. Back to the shits really. We had turned full circle. Although I had no idea until a few days later, the cause it seemed were two more pearly whites, making a total of six. Seriously, how many teeth does one baby need? It’s not like I’m feeding him steak and chips. And anyway, he could suck the chips.

One of the teeth took a while to come through so I shelved any hardcore attempts to get things back on track. To be honest I think this last failure (can I call it that?) hit hard. It knocked the wind out of my proverbial sails. I started taking the easy option; feeding him to sleep because it was too draining trying to get him to do it on his own, feeding him overnight again just to get him back to sleep quickly, bringing him into bed with me in the morning in the hope that I could get an extra hour of sleep.

None of this helped him sleep through the night and now we are back to him waking up ten or more times a night. I’ll just repeat that. Ten or more! This is not fun. I’m starting to have fantasies about putting a crying Luca in his cot, filling up the kettle with cold water, waiting for it to boil, and making myself and Tizzie Hall a cup of tea.

Lucky I’m a coffee drinker.

The bane of my existence - the teeth, not the baby

Along with many other things in my life, this blog has been sadly neglected due to large upheavals and a total, unflinching lack of sleep. So here’s a little back story…

A few months ago I read about a book called The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. Given my previous efforts had all turned out to be the Much-Cry We Will Taunt You With the Long Distant Memory of  What Sleep Was, I decided to buy the book. Actually reading the book ended up being harder than buying it (I still have not finished the novel I started in the weeks before I had Luca and that was almost eight months ago).

Pantley’s book claims to be a midway point between the two major sleep theories – Control Crying or Cry It Out and the absolute opposite, hardcore Attachment Parenting (responding to your baby each and every time they make a peep). This seemed perfect for me as I had tried both and had success with neither.

When I did finally get around to reading the book (after a truly hellish period of non-sleeping) I found that many of the suggestions were similar to those I had read before; create a bedtime routine, keep things calm in the hour leading up to sleep,  good daytime naps equal better nighttime sleeps ect. Where this theory differs is how it brings the ideas of the two opposing schools of thought to work together. Pantley advocates responding promptly, using whatever means necessary (patting, rocking, feeding, taking them into bed with you) to calm your baby down so that they can go back to sleep. She tells you to do this each and every time your baby cries and cannot go back to sleep on its own. In our case this was anywhere from eight to twelve times a night, every night. Once your baby is sleepy (but not asleep) you put them back into their cot. If they cry (which Luca did) you repeat the process again and again until they fall asleep without your aid.

This is not an easy solution. It’s work. Hard work. You don’t get to put your baby into their bed and go make a cup of tea while they cry themselves to sleep. You get up and you do whatever you need to do for however long it takes.

For fifteen days straight I followed Pantley’s advice to the letter and for fourteen nights straight Luca woke his usual eight to twelve times a night. During the day his naps became longer, they doubled and sometimes tripled in length, and it became easier to get him to go to sleep. He was happier and better rested but at night absolutely nothing changed. Nothing!

This was crushing. It felt endless. Sleep in forty five minute snatches is not really sleep, it’s torture. You get to taste sleep but you don’t get to have it. It’s dangled in front of you, waved in your face, suggested as a definite possibility only to be yanked away from you just as you are reaching out to grab it.

That was until last night. Last night I grabbed it with both hands and embraced it fully. I had forgotten what it felt like. I had dreams, crazy dreams. Dream after dream after dream until, I heard a noise, a familiar noise, but it wasn’t the noise I was expecting. It was my mobile. A message from my cousin on holidays in India. Shit! What was the time? Why hadn’t I heard from Luca? Was he tangled in his blanket? Stuck in the bars of his cot? Face down and not breathing? Or, was it just possible he was sleeping? I lasted about twenty minutes before creeping into his room and listening for breathing. And I heard it, soft and steady, and just a little croaky. Definitely breathing. But I felt his chest just in case. A steady rise and fall. Very definitely breathing. Very definitely sleeping.

Now this may have been a total fluke, a once off never again to be repeated, but I am hopeful. I figure if he has done it once he can and hopefully will do it again. It may not be tonight but I’m hoping it’s soon. Was it the book? Was he just ready? Who really knows? But here is hopefully where my investigation ends. Thank you Elizabeth Pantley! Unless of course I post again, in which case, does anyone have the number of a good sleep school? Or maybe I’ll just go back to feeding him whisky before bedtime…

One is people having home births with elder siblings watching. I’m sure these people don’t let their kids watch horror movies, so why let them watch their mother fall about in absolute agony for hours on end, followed by the bloody emergence of their new little brother or sister from their mother’s stretched and possibly torn vagina? Sounds like MA rated viewing to me.

The other is prolonged breastfeeding. And by prolonged I don’t mean twelve or even eighteen months, I mean years. When kids are old enough to pour themselves a drink, surely the boobs should go back to dad?

I seriously hope the whole thing is a massive joke, otherwise Cumbria has some disturbed little kids running around.

According to the Cry Translator, babies cry in five distinct ways when they are either hungry, tired, bored, annoyed or stressed.

Sound familiar?

The iPhone app is based on a dedicated handheld device of the same name which claims 96% accuracy.

The product is marketed as a way of being able to quickly and appropriately respond to your crying baby. There is, however, no mention of leaving your baby to cry if it is just having a bit of a whinge.