600 Days Without Solid Sleep

Aug 13th, 2009 | By Ian Gordon | Category: Article, Humor

Steaming Cup of CoffeeOur youngest daughter turned 20 months old a couple days ago.  That’s right, parents of babies celebrate birthdays every month.  Not balloons, ponies and clowns celebrating, more  a self-congratulatory rejoicing that we dodged another month without a domestic accident or ingesting one of daddy’s golf balls.

For most parents, this is a day marked by smiles, and maybe a tongue and cheek verse of “Happy Birthday.”  For my wife and I though, this day marked day 600 without uninterrupted sleep.  That’s right, for more than a year and a half our baby hasn’t slept all the way through the night.  Ever.  Well maybe like a dozen times, but that doesn’t sound as good.

Right about now a lot of you parents are thinking, “Wimps!  Just let the kid cry.  In like 2 or 3 days the kid will be sleeping like a college freshman after quarter beer night.”  Wrong!  Wait, did I just hear a few guys run out to buy condoms?

At this point, it’s not like she needs a bottle or anything.  We have tried everything.  We let her cry.  Believe me.  Want fun?  Try explaining to your 6 year old why it’s the middle of the night, her sister has been crying for an hour and you’re not doing anything about it.  By the way, it’s a scientific fact that when you have to let your six year old sleep in bed with you because the baby is keeping her up, the sound of the baby crying causes the sibling to sleep like a clock and donkey kick you in the head once every hour.

We’ve done the night-light and the total darkness.  Music?  Done it.  White noise?  Check.   You know that thing you do when you have a dog and you bring one of the baby’s blankets home from the hospital to prepare the dog for the baby?  Well my wife tried putting one of her shirts in the crib.  What?

At this point, we have a sort of system.  On an average night, the baby cries about 3 times.  This ensures we get our sleep in two to three hour spurts.  She usually stops after 5 minutes or so.  It’s another scientific fact that no matter how tired you are, 5 minutes is exactly the amount of crying required to wake you up from even the deepest sleep.  Of course after she is confident she has woken us, she goes back to sleep.  I keep telling my wife we can keep her quiet by just staying awake.  My wife doesn’t like this plan.

All of that being said, my wife and I are two of the lucky parents.  Our daughter has a few dangerous food allergies, but she is a perfectly healthy and happy kid.  When she runs up to you yelling, “Huggie!” it’s better than a triple espresso.

Has the lack of sleep put a strain on our patience, our businesses, our marriage?  Sure.  Of course it has.  I’m not perfect, I lose my temper easier than I would like, but I’m trying.  We’re getting through it.  We’ll be fine.  Our baby will grow into a kid and our kid will grow into a teenager.  As soon as she stops waking us up at night, we’ll start struggling to wake her up in the morning.

We have it easy.  I’m one of those weird people that tries to keep things in perspective. We have it easy.  On the positive side, I used to suffer from insomnia.  Really.  I don’t now.  Hey, maybe I should change the title of this to, “Our miracle baby cured my insomnia!”

Ian is the father of two young daughters  (6, and 20 months old).  He  has a podcast about starting a business while raising young children at Startup Daddy.

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  • This is an awesome post. My son is 2 years old and we have not slept either. Our lives became a lot easier when we moved him from the crib to the toddler bed. Now, when he wakes he walks to our room (to my side of the bed) and snuggles with me until he falls asleep. Sometimes I take him back to his room; sometimes, I don't.
  • michaelslogan
    Our first six weeks with my daughter were like that. We thought we were going to be arrested for infantacide once or twice. How do you endure 20 months? But she did get over it, and then about an hour after that happened, she started climbing out of her crib and up onto the kitchen counter. Mike Logan
  • If fatherhood has taught me anything, it is that I can "endure" much more than I thought possible. I've never slept much so it's much harder on my wife than me. I know it will end one day, so as long as she's healthy and throws me a "huggie" now and then, it's all good.
  • arichardson
    I am sorry that you are having a tough time, Ian. It looks like you have tried all of the standard solutions for getting the kiddo to sleep. Although this has not been an issue for us, there are other things that try our patience. But as you say, the benefits of being a Daddy far outweigh the negatives.
  • My wife and I are experiencing the opposite problem. From about 2 months to 18 months our son slept 11 hours a night, not a single peep. At 18 months, after staying a week with friends he stopped sleeping through the night and has only slept through the night a handful of times in the past 3 months.

    Although I know we are lucky to have gotten the first 18 months of sleep it has been a hard adjustment moving into the no-sleep world at this stage. I feel your pain about the "letting them cry it out method", our son's record before we gave up was 2.5 hours of straight crying.

    I thought I would be tougher than I am, but when I walk into his room and he clutches his blanky, looks up at me with those big eyes, and says "up me Daddy".....well I have no possible defense against that.

    On the plus side, it is amazing how much day you have to do things when your child gets up at 4:30AM.

    Good luck to all the toddler zombies out there.
  • nickcalder
    Ahhh, I'm just wadding into those waters now. How inspiring, er... terrifying to hear of what might lurk a few months away! Really though, good or bad, it's great to have a place where you can hear from guys going through this insane roller coaster along with the rest of us. It's a nice thing to keep in mind at 3:30 am when you feel like you are the only dad in the world blearily looking out at the street light, wondering when the heck you'll be able to slip back into bed before the little one you're holding realizes he's been tricked into falling asleep again. Good stuff!
  • peterabraham
    Great article! Just wait until that insomnia cure of yours turns into a full-blown teen resenting your mere existence. Just 16 more years to go and you can sleep to your heart's content. ;-).
  • Can't wait until those teen years!
  • It's not until the second one that you begin having thoughts like "I don't like being awake at 4AM" and "sure she is cute, but I'd rather see her in natural light" and "why does the diaper genie have to be full now?".
    Ah - those were the days. I do think I actually had free time somewhere around that time period. That has all been replaced by multiple soccer teams, a volleyball team, dog shows and sleep overs with teens/tweens that also won't go to bed. The circle is now complete!
  • moccinter
    Great post! Hilarious! Do you think that when your daughter talks to other babies she says "Hey, guess what? I've kept my mom and dad up for 600 days now. What number are you on?"
  • You may be on to something here. Playground bragging rights is pretty powerful motivator.
  • timjustynski
    I know your pain! My son is 3 1/2 years old and he may have slept though the night (maybe) 15 times. A while back we decided to let him get in the bed with us, after the first time he wakes up. That way when he gets up the second and third time, we don't have to get out of bed to take care of him. The only problem with that, is now he sleeps on top of us, and we get kicked in the head and a knee in the back constantly. He is a great kid otherwise, and I wouldnt trade him for the world. He is the smartest 3 year old I know!

    I hope and pray that we both get to sleep some where down the road!
  • We did a couple of months of that too- bringing her into our bed after the first scream. She also did her share of kicking so we realized that we were actually getting LESS sleep. Hey, my daughter is really smart too. She has a much greater vocabulary than most her age. Maybe not sleeping causes the brain to develop quicker?
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