Okay, Internet, I'm going to come out and say it because jinxing myself isn't an issue anymore. Maya was sleeping through the night last week. From 8 p.m.-7 a.m. And it was GLORIOUS. I was afraid to say anything for fear of jinxing our good fortune. But, alas, it was short lived, for now anyway. This week she's been waking up again, earlier than she has for at least the past month or so. It started out as waking up twice, at like 2 and 4 a.m., and I was freaking out. But now it's just once between 2-4 a.m., then sleeping again till 7. She seems to wake up and squawk sometimes, but then settles herself back down. So it's not that bad. Just a bummer after I got a reminder of what a full night's sleep could feel like again. And because until now she'd been sleeping later and later (before the full night she'd go till at least 5 a.m.), it felt like progress.
Apparently, though, what we're experiencing now is known as the four month sleep regression. Maya is 16 weeks old this Saturday. (Is that her four month mark or is it May 30?) I Googled "four month sleep regression" though, and it seems more like a term that exhausted and frustrated new moms have coined because it makes us feel better about a new normal that is defined by inconsistency and reality falling a bit short of expectations. At four months, I think we expect to have made so much "progress," because before babies, life had a tendency to be somewhat linear. And we have progressed, in leaps and bounds. But we have these grand expectations of things returning to some semblance of normalcy, like the normal we've known pre-baby, and I don't think that ever actually happens again.
At three months, my friends and I were saying we felt pressure to have it together more in some ways. Like we couldn't walk around in stretchy pants with unwashed hair anymore, give the gas station cashier our laundry receipt instead of our debit card, and excuse the whole mess that is seemingly our life with, "Oh, I just had a baby." Nope. Three months sounds more official than "8 weeks." Get it together. (Yeah right.)
Take that to four months, and you're still waking up at night, there's still a prominent spare tire around your waist, and you realize that you've done things like lost your own health insurance card only to find your daughter's card residing snugly in your wallet--a perfect metaphor for how her needs replace yours without you even realizing it. Meanwhile though, the baby that is causing all this turmoil for your gradually recovering self-identity is growing and developing by leaps and bounds. Maya is rolling over front to back, and is scooching herself around the floor as if trying to get to the burrito place across the street. See?
She's settling herself into sleep better. Her head and neck control is out of the park. She's grabbing everything. So no wonder she's having some sleep issues. The consensus seems to be that with developmental progress comes sleep regress. But that doesn't meant it's an actual regression.
I mean, my whole life is a regression if you want to look at it that way. I sit around in pajama pants longer than I will ever admit and my hair was falling out of its elastic band yesterday at the gym because it was too greasy to stay bound during jumping jacks. But in another sense, my life is more evolved than it was when my personal hygiene was never in question. Does this look like regression to you? And no, she was not watching "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," but don't you feel like she should be holding a remote?
My sister-in-law once said something along the lines of, you realize you're a better parent not when your kids become more predictable but you become more adaptable. I'm learning what I can do on interrupted sleep and disrupted personal upkeep, and it includes making an adorable little person smile a billion times a day. I'm all she needs to stay alive and grow. I feed her, and I take care of her, and she keeps doing new things. I call that pregress. Wait, I'm tired, I meant progress.
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