by Sangeetha Narayan

Created on: January 25, 2008

SLEEP LIKE A BABY?

Sleep like a baby now there's a myth of gigantic proportion! Whoever came up with this line, probably never has seen a baby sleep. Sleep and babies have rarely ever co-existed for more than a few hours. The only people who are authorized to come up with any statements about babies and sleep are their mothers!

No, I kid you not, I speak totally by experience. The first few months of a baby's life are heaven, both for the child and the mother. At this stage, nature pretty much makes sure that the baby gets its adequate rest. I mean they are cranky enough when they are hungry or dirty ( I guess you know what I mean), god forbid if they can't even sleep well. Of course, some smart ones can cheat nature too. They sleep for eight to nine hours straight in the day time, and then its party time in the night! Then they look at you with their innocent eyes as if they're saying, "Come on, you told me to sleep for eight to nine hours, but never said anything about what time of the day, did you?"

Well, trust me, there isn't anything you can do about it, except grin and bear it. Then the cutie pies grow up a bit and start developing a mind of their own. You'd think that kids who have so much activity in the day time should fall asleep within a few minutes and keep sleeping like a log till you shake them awake, wouldn't you? Hmmmm you can keep dreaming, if you want. But take it from an experienced mother, its never going to happen! The way I see it, the more active they have been, the more tired they become. The more tired they become, the longer they take to sleep. And finally, the longer they take to sleep, the more restless their sleep is for the rest of the night. So what can be done about this problem. Well, you can try taking them to bed long before they get tired (if they will let you, that is). If they protest - you guessed it right, yawn, and grin and bear it! One trick to get them to bed early is to tell them that they are allowed to do one favorite thing before they have to sleep. With my little one who is a regular chatter box, I tell her that she can talk for some time before going to sleep. So, off we go to bed, and Neha starts chattering about this thing and that. She usually doesn't need more encouragement than, "Oh, Ok! Oh,really!" So she's happy that she gets to talk and I'm happy that she's in bed early with the lights switched off.

Now, here's a warning to the more independent minded parents. And when I talk about independence, I mean

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