Sleep..so far

My firstborn Tom was a terrible sleeper! I tried everything to get him to sleep, hairdryer, wave noises, soft music, various sleep training strategy’s plus a couple of sessions of Craniology(by then I was pretty desperate)..nothing worked and he was two and a half years old before he started to sleep well consistently. I remember dreading the sleep deprivation when expecting Evie my second child but luckily that went much smoother. I tried the sleep training strategy where I stayed with her and shushed/patted her and whilst it felt like the longest couple of weeks, it worked and she was able to self soothe from then. I didn’t want to use sleep training methods with Maisie due to her Down Syndrome diagnosis but luckily for us she’s been pretty good at self soothing so far which I think is down to her beautiful sweet nature, not to mention a particular bunny comforter!

Of course we still have night awakenings with Maisie turning 14 months now, there is still no sign of a tooth appearing. Babies with Down Syndrome can have a delay with their baby teeth developing but this isn’t the case for every infant. It does feel like Maisie has been teething for months now and I’m just hoping a bunch of them come at once. Sometimes when she cries it can be easy to get her off again, then there are nights when it’s much more difficult. I end up with her in the bed and transfer her once she’s asleep, or sit beside her with her in the cot depending on how tired I am. Yet with all sleep challenges things change like this past week when she developed croup leaving her very unsettled at night. Then Covid struck all of us and just when we got Maisie sleeping through again, didn’t Evie wake during the night. Sleep can be such a massive issue for any parent but for now I’m thankful that there doesn’t seem to be any underlying sleep issues with Maisie(some kids with DS can develop sleep apnea) so we take the good nights when they come and after a bad night isn’t it always the way that one smile in the morning can erase the memories of the night before.