Everyone knows that old tale of schadenfreude. The minute you announce anything that is going well with your baby is the same minute your baby decides to flip that good fortune on its head and act like a little monster. With this knowledge I never once boasted about my little angel's sleeping habits. People would look over with a smirk and ask "so... How's she sleeping?" And I would nod slowly and say "well, for now. I am lucky." This would be followed by a probe "how many times does she feed at night?" To which I would reply "at the moment, she doesn't." Almost always this would be met with an annoyed look and curt response from hopeful parents who expected 3-4 night feeds from my baby, as they had years before.
So life plodded on, disappointing those after a good laugh and little G amazing us everyday with her ability to sleep through the night. She even managed to crack jet lag in just 2 days and revert back to sleeping 7-7. That was until she hit 5.5 months old.
Many a time I had been told that I would find feeding her solids would help G to sleep. I had heard this so often and with such conviction I had begun to smile and nod as if this was a problem for me. What no one ever told me was that once she was on solids she may begin to sleep badly.
I started weaning her at 22 weeks and my little lady took to solid food like a duck to water. Like her mother before her she found solid food the missing piece of her puzzle and boy did she guzzle. She loved her carrots, pears, sweet potatoes and salmon. She ate purée and led her own weaning with cucumber sticks and toast soldiers. She delighted in banana despite it constipating her and appeared to enjoy drinking water from a sippy cup. She also stopped sleeping through the night.
Baffled as ever by our baby, the Hubster and I did what any first time parents would do. We gave her calpol. We turned the heating up. We turned the heating down. We cuddled her. We took her temperature. We gave her teething granules. We gave her water. We fed her. We took her temperature again. We turned Euan the sodding Dream Sheep on again and again and again.
We assumed it was teething. Then we were absolutely sure it was the start of a cold before deciding it was definitely too cold in the house. Finally we convinced ourselves that it was a growth spurt.
What I never even considered was that poor little G may be having a couple of digestion issues. I had read the books, you see. I knew not to feed her anything adventurous too close to bedtime. I had started with lunch, progressed to breakfast and finally after seeing our health visitor, dinner. There was no way the food could be making her restless at night... Was there?
The answer is of course, who blooming knows? Until my darling little angel can tell me what's wrong I am afraid that the Hubster and I will continue to run through every possible ailment under the sun before finally attributing her night time waking to tiny elves or ghosts.
What I am absolutely certain of however, is that she slept right through the night until those solid smelly poos started. It is either a very strange coincidence or something that someone should be telling us!
The good news? After 2 weeks of random wake ups and baby G talking to herself at all hours of the night, she finally went back to sleeping well.
Well, until she got a frigging throat infection. But that story is definitely one for another day!
