Once upon a time, I believed that once your child reached the magical weight, age, and self-soothing ability that enables them to sleep peacefully through the night, you don't have to worry about sleep problems ever again. Then I grew up and realized this was a ridiculous lie. You may not be endlessly exhausted all the time anymore, but you are never done fighting sleep issues. It was a good thing to learn. Because now, when Madeline has relapses and goes from quietly and sweetly hopping into bed for every nap and bedtime to fighting any mention of the word sleep and staying up hours past her bedtime, I'm prepared. I can breathe deeply and repeat to myself, at least she's not waking every two hours or waking up at 5 AM. The little punk is getting tame in her old age.
Madeline's latest sleeping exploits are probably my fault, because I coddle her when she's sick. Which means she got a lot more attention and leeway on the whole sleeping thing. I sang her to sleep and let her cuddle til she was asleep, and let her sleep schedule get entirely wrecked. And of course, Jessie did all of this too. Let's not leave him blameless in the whole mess, for he is just as softhearted as I am when Madeline pulls out her little cough and looks sad and adorable. So the upshot of the whole thing is that she forgot how to go to bed at night. And I was singing to her for a half hour every time she needed to sleep, and my voice was getting a bit hoarse. But then I was brilliant (or rather, I had this suggested to me by ten different people and went, oh, duh, why didn't I think of that?), and put the Children's Songbook on CD playing in her room. Now she gets music, I get to not have laryngitis, and everyone's happy. Unless our CD player breaks. In which case anyone with a decent voice is cordially invited to come perform to a captive audience at the Warner household. (And I do mean captive, since she hasn't figured out how to climb out of the crib yet.)
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