An important lesson that I forgot

Another trip down memory lane to that foggy time when Jude was a newborn and I wasn't getting any sleep. This was during a time when Jude's day sleeps were 20 minute naps and, while he slept for a few hours at a stretch during the night, I was so stressed I couldn't sleep at all.

After several months wondering what I was doing wrong, the community nurse came around to see what was happening in the home. That particular day Jude decided to sleep for hours, but after he finally woke and fed the community nurse explained something that changed everything for me.

"Watch and listen carefully," she explained, "and learn the difference between crying because he needs you and crying because he is having trouble falling asleep." It hadn't occurred to me that he might be crying because he wanted to be asleep, I kept assuming he needed me to do something, and it was killing me that I couldn't figure out what that was.

As a long-term insomniac I know how frustrating it is to not be able to fall asleep. I often lie in bed groaning and bemoaning the fact that I seemed to be absent the day they taught everyone the trick of lying down, closing your eyes and falling asleep. It seems I never grew out of the problem that so many newborns face.

So I learned great patience with Jude and I paid close attention. I soon learned that there is a difference between crying and sleep anguish. I don't believe in controlled crying, so I would not abandon him during the trying time while sleep alluded him, but I realised that I shouldn't pick him and carry him around, either. I would sit by his side and pat him until he was calm and then, when his whimpers had turned to moans, I would leave him to find sleep on his own. It didn't take too long before he was sleeping well.

Recently, however, I realised how much time I was wasting during the day running up to Jude's room when he was supposed to be taking a nap. He would lie in bed and talk loudly to himself and his toys and then whimper and moan. I would run up and try to settle him. I'd try to coax him to sleep. I'd remind him he was tired and had asked to go to bed. I would inevitably end up frustrated and angry at him for refusing to sleep when he was clearly tired.

Then finally I remembered what I had learned when he was a newborn. He wasn't up there in bed crying or calling out for me, so I fought the urge to tend to him and left him to fall asleep on his own. Amazingly it took barely a few days for sleep to start coming easily and naturally to him. By allowing him to figure it out for himself, I hope I have prevented a lifetime of insomnia for him.