Understanding your baby and their sleep routine is hard – each book, each website, each relative, each friend with a child gives you a different piece of information. Just let them cry it out they say, pick them up and rock him they say, he should be sleeping through they say, you shouldn’t be dropping his night feed yet they said, solids will help him sleep through they say, too much solids means he’s not getting enough calories they say, google that, google the other… Now google is also keeping me awake at night! I just want to sleep comfortably at night and get some rest. Maybe that’s only possible with a Leesa mattress, maybe it will keep our baby asleep the whole night!

I’m not a fan of the ‘cry it out’ school of thought – it ends with me being in tears more than my little one. And if my husband is home, it ends in him not knowing who to comfort – me or the baby.

We had an awesome sleeper in our bed from Counting sheep Mattress Reviews… then he became aware of the world and me leaving him. It doesn’t matter if I pop him down awake or asleep, he will start to cry when I leave the room.

So we handed bed time duties over to my husband and that seemed to settle our night time issue – he sleeps from 8ish until 2ish, then back down until 6ish. I’m a little disappointed because we used to pop him down at 10ish and he would sleep threw until 6ish, but that pattern some how got broken along the way.

Some people say that he should be dropping his night feed – but the clinic nurse said it was okay that he was still feeding during the night. He is more aware of everything during the day and isn’t feeding as focused as he used to – TV, talking, Daddy home from work, a dog barking… he want to come off and have a look, and you know you have to have a baby proof of everything so he doesn’t get hurt trying yo figure out what’s going on. I’ve nicknamed him ‘Sticky Beak’.

If he needs the dark and the quiet to take in the calories that he missed during the day, I’m okay with it. I’m guessing this wont last much longer, I don’t want to be in a hurry for him to end his baby stage. Plus, his last breast feed was at 6pm so he has in fact gone 8 hours ( well 7 hours if you count solids at 7pm).

My issue is day sleeps. I pop him down in his cot and he rolls over and crawls around. I pop back in, lie him on his back, tuck him in and leave. 10 minutes later I’m back in repeating the process.

Sometimes he falls asleep, other times he gets so worked up that I give in and rock him off to sleep.

I found this clinic and after I visit their website I always feel like I’m missing a piece of the sleep puzzle. I’ve thought about going into the sleep clinic, but I think we are doing pretty well in terms of sleep and this is a stage that we just need to work through. Sometimes I think that we put pressure on our babies to be perfect and we want them to fit into these ‘normal’ patterns.

But all babies are different – and all lifestyles are different. Having babies means that you aren’t going to have Sunday sleep ins and enjoy more than 8hrs of sleep in a row… Or am I wrong?

How are your babies sleeping? Are you a mum of older children who have any tips or advice?