Sleep, teeth and two steps backward

Aside from the cleft, sleep, or lack thereof was always my primary concern during Clare's pregnancy. How I would cope on 4 or 5 hours a night was always a big worry. After Jake was born it took a while to adjust but we did adjust and it's amazing how you can actually cope. Then for probably three months Jake would miss out the eleven pm or midnight feed and go to 3am before waking for food. Then he'd sleep until 6 or sometimes 7. We have a clock which projects the time onto our ceiling so know about his waking times and analyse them more than we perhaps ought to but life is about routine and it's how we see him develop. We bore anyone stupid enough not to make their excuses with tales of how tired we are and how he slept last night! Anyway for a long time he was a one-feed-a-night baby and we could probably cope with that indefinitely.

Then his op came along and quite understandably it messed with his routine completely and things haven't been the same since. It's been a month since the lip repair and we've had two of the old nights but the rest have been at best unpredictable and at worst, horrendous.

One of Jake's best habits was passing out at on the dot of 7pm after his food and would be fast asleep without so much as a murmur but now he fights it and quite often needs shushing and stroking and dummying before going to sleep. Then he wakes at 8, 9 and 10. His best trick now is to save up his rage until either five minutes before we fall asleep or five minutes after. If I was crossing my fingers before, I am praying to the East and making deals with God now.

The problem is that, following the operation he got a cold (how cruel is that) and now he's getting teeth. Understandably he's got the hump but he's teething all day long so I don't get it that he only wants to scream at night. We drug him up to the eyeballs before he goes to sleep but nothing really helps. It's just one of those things we have to go through. I'm sure anyone reading this will think this is just a moan and I should get over it but as I've said before, this is my blog and if you don't like it write your own. Or just piss off. Can you tell I'm tired?!