How to sleep

The first couple weeks Eli was on Earth, he slept all the time. Then he got into his “Please put me back in the womb” stage where he didn’t sleep at all (I still have the scars from trying to claw my eyes out). Now, he’s entering a new stage. The “When will he sleep through the night?” stage.

Every night we put him down and pray a little prayer. Will the stars align? Will tonight be the night he sleeps through the night? Will Diana get more than fifteen minutes of sleep? The answer has been “no” for 4 months now.

The truth is, a lot of babies need to be taught how to sleep through the night. They get so used to waking up every couple hours and getting some mommy action that they have no use for sleeping more than 4 hours. I, on the other hand, have a lot of use for sleeping more than 4 hours.

There are a couple schools of thought on how to get babies to sleep more. One is throw them in a room and come back the next morning no matter how hard he cries. This is the “My child will hate me for the rest of my life and become a successful poet” method. Another is to pick him up every time he cries and rock him back to sleep. This is the “My child will manipulate me from now on/let’s go buy him a Porsche” method.

Diana and I are experimenting with something in between. We put the little drool monster down for sleep, tell him we love him and then leave. If he cries, we come back after 3 minutes. We tell him he’s handsome and then take off again. If he cries, we wait 5 minutes, come back and tell him he’s a great dancer. Then we take off again. If he cries, we wait ten minutes. Ten minutes is the most we’ll let him cry.

But yesterday, the trial run day, Diana put him down and he cried for five minutes before sleeping for almost 6 hours straight. We could be onto something.

I’m at work today, so I don’t have any cute Eli pics. But I do have a weird picture of my brother Steve with muttonchops.