Midnight Mothering = Fail.

It’s hard to be a good parent in the middle of the night.

Generally, Ella is pretty good, sleep-wise. She goes to bed around 7.30pm and wakes up between 6 and 7 in the morning. What happens in between, however, is anyone’s guess. Sometimes she sleeps right through (hooray), but sometimes she wakes up a few hours after going to bed (boo).

When she does wake up, I’ve sadly gotten her (us) into the bad habit of coming into our bed. Now, if we’re talking early hours of the morning wake-ups, then it’s fine – it’s kinda nice to have a snuggle with my baby while we sleep in a bit more. If we’re talking about late evening wake-ups, its a nightmare.

Take last night, for example. Just as I was drifting off to sleep about 11.30, I heard her wake up. I won’t repeat the words which came out of my mouth at the time. Needless to say, I was not pleased. So I got up and brought her into our bed, and fed her. Apparently, that wasn’t enough. She wanted to play.

Excuse me, Ella, but midnight is NOT a good time to PLAY!

My middle of the night arsenal is pretty much limited to sticking her in our bed and shoving a boob in her mouth. This works almost all the time. If I try to resettle her in her own bed, all that happens is her getting into our bed is delayed by an hour or so, and I may be reduced to tears.

So when she’s in our bed, and she’s been fed, and she still won’t go to sleep… I’m at a loss. It’s hard enough to keep my eyes open, let alone form a rational plan of attack. So I end up resorting to Bad Parenting. This involves, but is not limited to, telling her to shut up and go to sleep, holding her to me while she kicks and screams, and ignoring her. That last one is made more difficult by the fact that she is constantly trying to climb over me or pull on my nose.

Eventually she did go to sleep, through no fault of my own, and I may or may not have still been awake at the time. Whoops.