SLEEP!!!

Those of you who know me really well understand how obsessed I may seem about sleep. For a number of reasons it's something I've struggled to get my entire life, but I just figured I didn't have much control in that area as any and all attempts to get more usually failed miserably. (Except for that one time in college when I finally had success teaching myself to fall asleep on my own by repeating some phrase over and over in my mind to keep myself from mulling over everything and anything until all hours of the night.) Then my lovely daughter H was born. I loved her more than anything--and still do. However, she was also unable to sleep. Period. It has turned out to be a blessing in disguise, in a way, as it made me desperate enough to search endlessly (ha, certainly not tirelessly, though!) for information on infant sleep. This road actually has lead me to find the puzzle pieces I've needed for understanding and improving my own sleep. (Not that I'm actually in happy land yet, as you'll see from the previous posts! Like I mentioned, there are many things that affect my--and anyone else's--sleep, and lack of knowledge was only one of them.)

Just now I came across what felt like the entire, completed puzzle explaining infant sleep--the jack pot, the pot of gold, whatever you might want to call it. The recently updated (Nov '10) webpage on child sleep (which I know wasn't this updated when H was an infant!) from the University of Michigan is so beautifully stunning that it brings tears to the eyes of this absolutely exhausted mama. (Okay, so not really right this moment as *BOTH OF MY CHILDREN ARE PEACEFULLY SLEEPING* but I'm sure that it'll make me cry tears of joy the next time I'm that absolutely exhausted mama, which I probably will be in about 10 minutes if I don't go take advantage of that fact that my children are asleep .)

The webpage fully covers--or provide links or book recommendations and/or reviews for--practically everything sleep-related that I've read up on the past five years of my daughter's life. And, what's even better, it has just pointed out to me a very likely reason why my daughter's sleep has been so completely and terribly awful her entire life.

After Lil'S's arrival, and after observing his beautiful way of understanding that he's supposed to sleep for a couple sleep cycles in the morning, a couple sleep cycles in the afternoon, and then one more sleep cycle in the evening (when younger and now when desperately needed as catch-up), I decided that the differences between H and Lil'S's sleep just had to be--not me doing something different--but the fact they were two different people and it just must be a compete difference. Well, that may play a part into it. However, there were major differences between how I was when H was born and how I was when Lil'S was born.

I wasn't as depressed with Lil'S as I was with H.

Check out this UM study linking mother's depression and infant sleep.

Okay, now I think I am going to cry thinking about it. Time for my nap! (After I go put Lil'S back to sleep!)