When it comes to sleeping at night, I give August a solid B+/A- with the occasional C thrown in.

B+ for only occasionally (but still occasionally) needing encouragement at bedtime.
A- for sleeping fairly long stretches at a time.
A- for not being reliant on the pacifier and only using it 50% of the time.
C for flipping like a switch between smiling (awake) and snarling (tired) with the put-me-to-bed-now-or-this-will-be-the-end cry.
A+ for sleeping in his crib, on his own, in the dark with no reliance on swings or other movement sources.
B+ for more or less being able to alternate between the crib and the stroller.
A for giving up his bassinet when he was still a tiny piglet; and A for being willing to go back into the bassinet after he’d clearly given it up, when the construction project upstairs was giving us all a headache.

It’s true August is not sleeping through the night and it’s true he demands dinner-time-top-ups at various unpredictable moments between midnight and 6 a.m. But who am I to complain about that? That’s small potatoes.

I’ve heard the horror stories, my friends.

One young fellow, a four-and-a-half-month-old from Baby Yoga needs to be bounced on the bouncy ball — vigorously — before he falls asleep. That includes before bedtime, before every nap and before every middle-of-the-night wake-up-call.

Babies wake up and go to sleep a great many times in a 24-hour period. So, can you imagine vigorously bouncing a baby on a ball at 2 a.m.? And then, say, again, at 5 a.m.? And then again at around 8.30 a.m.? And then again at around noon? And then maybe at some point in the mid afternoon? And then in the early evening? Well, exactly.

So I’m not going to rock the boat: I’ll take what I’ve got and not complain about the occasional wrinkle in August’s sleep habits.

Tags: Sleeping