This past week I probably had my worst nights sleep since becoming a dad.
Before I go into that, let me start from the beginning though.
I have been incredibly lucky with my sleep since becoming a first time dad. Renee, who is an absolute legend of a first time mum in my books, incredibly, unselfishly and without hesitation took on the night shifts when it came to getting up to Jesse when he woke throughout the night.
In the beginning, she was breastfeeding, so there wasn’t much use for me to be awake. And our rationale was that it was better having one well rested parent for the day to take on most of the responsibility.
Then, I went back to work, while Renee continued her journey as a stay at home mum. We both agreed that again, there was wasn’t much use for me to get up throughout the night so that I was tired for work the next day.
What an amazing woman right! I am an incredibly lucky man to have someone who has practically been a sleep deprived mess for the past 10 months, but hasn’t complained about it one bit.
Cut to last Wednesday night.
Jesse has been teething and on top of this, he is going through his latest leap. This has resulted in a very unhappy and unsettled boy over the past week or two.
Wednesday night, I went through Jesse’s new bedtime routine which has become one of my new responsibilities. One that I cherish and love to do. He fell asleep relatively easily at around 7pm, which has become somewhat of the normal time he falls asleep for the first time of a night.
9:30pm he wakes for the first time. Something that we’ve become used to recently. Him waking up often throughout the night. Well, trying to get him back to sleep after he woke was nearly impossible!
Everything Renee tried just simply would not work. He was quiet when he had a boob in his mouth, but as soon as that stopped he would wake up. Renee would try and stand and he would wake up crying. Renee would try and put him down in his cot, and he would start screaming.
Cue me to try and calm the situation. I manage to get him to to fall asleep in my arms without waking up. SUCCESS!
Go to put him in his cot, and again he would start screaming!
It turns out the only thing that would stop him from screaming was bringing him into our bed with us.
So that’s exactly what we did. We brought him into our bed, where he tossed and turned until he found a comfortable spot in bed. He had his chest and head laying up on my pillow pressed in as close as he could to my face.
Every time I would move, he would shuffle over pressing his head back against my face. At one stage, he was almost pushing me off my own pillow.
And that is how I lay in bed… until 2am the next morning. Not sleeping. Just snuggling with our little Jesse, listening to his breathing as he slept soundly.
And you know what, despite the fact that I didn’t get to sleep until 2am… and despite the fact that I was tired at work the next day, I loved EVERY… SINGLE… SECOND of him snuggled into my face as he slept that night.
Since that night we have thrown the rule book out the window and decided that for all 3 of our sakes, if having Jesse sleep in our bed means that we get a better night sleep, well dammit he will sleep in our bed!
And that’s what we’ve done. For the past 3 nights he has slept in our bed. And you know what, I think it’s the best sleep Jesse and Renee have gotten in months!
As for me, I get to fall asleep every night knowing that I’m snuggling with my two favourite people in the whole wide world!
not so secret life of us 