When Coco was just a couple of weeks old, I can remember distinctly being at The Little Gym with my older daughter and telling the other mothers (more like bragging to the other mothers) that life with a newborn was so easy this time around because Coco was such a master sleeper already. Five hours at a stretch! Wow! I took so much pride in that. Mistakenly, of course. Because – duh – she was a newborn, and that’s what they do! They sleep! A lot!

Now, here we are, Coco is nearly 6 months old and she is not sleeping. At all. She’s napping all night long. Two hour naps, each punctuated with a quick nursing session and then she’s back down for another two hours. This goes on from 7 p.m., when I put her down, until 7 in the morning, when she wakes up. And I go to her, willingly. She is my baby girl, my last baby, and so I actually soak her in during these feeding sessions at night. I rock with her. I smell her head. I think about how wonderful life is going to be for her. And then I lay her back down into her crib and climb back into my bed. And think. And toss and turn. And make “to do” lists in my head. And plan the dinner menu for the week. And wonder why I haven’t been on the elliptical machine in a week. And then, I finally fall back asleep, only to be woken back up by her a half-hour later. It’s brutal and I’m tired and you couple that with a very, very active 2-year old and I’m just kind of beginning to get to the end of the rope here. I need some sleep. Desperately.

Pea was also a troubled sleeper. And I tried everything with her. Something called the “gentle” method, which turned out not to be all that gentle. And then we tried to “Ferberize” her. What a disaster that was. Finally, we agreed upon a method from a book called “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” In three words: cry it out. And before you roll your eyes and say to yourself “what kind of a mother does that?” let me tell you that it works. And when you’ve tried other methods and they haven’t worked for your child, you try another one. Well, this happened to be our other one. No two children are alike, and what works for one may not work for another. This method was pure magic for us. Pea finally, at 11-months of age, began to sleep through the night. We’d put her down at 7 and she’d wake up the next morning at 7. We would not hear from her at all during the night. It was amazing and I was so grateful and well-rested and we just finally settled into a deliriously happy schedule in our household. And then Coco came along. And now, once again, there is little to no sleep. For me.

So, I am going to start this method with her tonight. And I’m going to stick to it. And with any luck at all, little Coco will be sleeping well in about a week. Sure, I know she’s going to wake up a couple of times a night to nurse; I get that and I’m fine with that. My goal is to get her into a sleep schedule that allows for these feedings at midnight and then again at 5 am. It’s realistic and would afford me the luxury of some much-needed rest that will hopefully alleviate some of the massive impatience I’ve been suffering with the last couple of months, which in turn will affect my little family in a pleasant way. So it is worth it. A little crying over the course of a week leads to wonderful things in the end.

How can this little angel baby cause so much strife during the midnight hour? How?