My 8-Month-Old Broke My Sleep Routine (And I Stopped Pretending I Had It All Together)
It’s 2:22 am right now, and I’m sitting on the hallway carpet outside Leo’s nursery, leaning against the wall with a hole in my left sock and a half-drunk lukewarm coffee I grabbed from the counter before I stumbled out here. The screaming stopped five minutes ago, but I know if I creep back into my bed, he’ll start up again. That’s how it works this week.
Three weeks ago, I commented a stupid casual brag on my friend’s Instagram post about her own baby sleep chaos, saying “Yeah Leo’s been sleeping 7 hours straight for a month now, we got lucky!” I even had brunch with my sister last weekend and told her sleep training was the best decision we ever made. I feel like such an idiot now. This 8-month sleep mess isn’t a myth parents make up, it’s a full-on invasion of your house and your sanity.
Leo figured out how to crawl 10 days ago, and two days after that he pulled himself up to stand on the crib rails. Now that’s all he wants to do, even when he’s so tired his eyes are barely open and he’s rubbing them so hard his cheeks turn pink. I’ll go in after 10 minutes of screaming, and there he is, standing holding the bars, grinning at me like he just pulled off a heist, not like he woke me up out of a dead sleep. The worst part? He doesn’t know how to sit back down. So he just stands there panicking and screaming until I come in, lower him down, tuck him in, leave, and 60 seconds later he’s pulling himself up again. I counted last night: I went in 17 times. My partner got up at 5 for work, so I didn’t want to wake him, so I just did the whole thing myself, and by the 12th time I was whispering “please just sit down I’m begging you” through the door like a crazy person.
Awkward thing that happened earlier this week: our next door neighbor texted me at 1:45 am that they could hear crying through the wall and just wanted to make sure everyone was okay. I wanted to dig a hole and bury myself in the backyard. I texted back “It’s just our 8-month-old’s sleep, so sorry for the noise!” and they never wrote back. Now I wait 5 minutes after I hear them leave for work before I go take the trash out, because I don’t want to have to make small talk about how my baby is keeping them up. It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose, you know? But I still feel guilty.
I used to be so strict about the routine. I had an app that tracked every nap, every wake up, I timed his awake time down to the minute, swore by lavender lotion and a 15 minute pre-bed story and no screens an hour before bed. Now? Some days he naps for 20 minutes in the stroller while I run to Target to get more diapers, some days he conks out for two hours on the couch next to me while I eat cold pizza for lunch. I stopped logging everything. I stopped panicking if we’re out past his nap time. I used to think every single wake up was my fault, that I messed up the awake window or gave him too much banana before bed or didn’t do the routine right. Now I just think his brain is growing so fast it can’t turn off at night. He’s learning how to move, how to recognize strangers from family, how to throw a cheerio across the room on purpose, that’s a lot of work for a tiny person.
Last week I tried to do cry it out again, like we did when he was 4 months. I stood outside the kitchen and listened, and after 12 minutes I was crying harder than he was. So I went in and picked him up, and he fell asleep on my chest immediately, and I just sat there on the rocking chair for the rest of the night. We swore we wouldn’t do regular co-sleeping, that we wanted our bed to be just ours, but some nights I just bring him in with us, and even though he kicks me in the ribs all night and wiggles into my face so I can barely breathe, I get at least a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, and that’s worth breaking the rule for. I used to feel terrible about it, like I was failing at the whole sleep thing, but now I don’t care. We’re all just tired, we all just need to sleep.
Yesterday we had a good night. He only woke up once, I fed him, put him back down, and he slept until 6:30. I woke up feeling almost human, thought “oh, it’s over, we’re back on track.” Then tonight he woke up at 11, 1:15, and now 2:10, and here I am on the hallway carpet. It’s not a straight line, right? No one tells you that. Everyone says “the regression lasts two weeks” but it’s been three already, and some days it’s better some days it’s worse.
I don’t have any advice, really. I’m not here to tell you it all gets better, because right now it doesn’t feel like it’s going to get better. I cried in the grocery store parking lot yesterday because I was so tired I forgot the list I made on the counter, and then I realized I was crying over a grocery list, and that just made me cry harder. Some days I snap at my partner over leaving a dirty spoon on the counter, and I feel bad after, but I’m too tired to apologize properly right away.
Leo just made a little snuffly noise through the door. I should probably go check on him, see if he’s actually asleep this time. I know eventually this will pass, I guess. But right now it’s just messy, and tiring, and some moments it’s even kind of soft, when he’s finally asleep on my chest and I can just sit there and smell his baby shampoo and the stale goldfish crumbs he stuffed in his neck roll before bed. It’s not the perfect sleep routine I thought I’d have by eight months, it’s not the put-together parent I thought I’d be. But it’s where we are right now. I stopped trying to pretend it’s anything else.
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