Kristie McNealy, MD

Ssshhhh.  Baby sleeping . . .  Oh wait, never mind.  He’s awake already.

I know two things for certain.  First, I’m not alone in the sleep problem department, because if you type “baby sleep” into Google, you’ll get something like 48 MILLION hits.  “Baby sleep tips” winnows that down to a paltry 6 or 7 million results.  Second, all kids are different, and what works with one, is never gauranteed to work with another.  Even most pediatricians agree that there is no one way to get a baby to sleep.  If there was, they’d write the book, and retire from practice as a bajillionaire.

After four kids, I know what it can be like to struggle with sleep problems, and I also know the bliss of a baby that easily sleeps 13 hours straight every night and takes wonderfully long naps.  But despite having two kids that didn’t sleep through the night until they were two, I have never, ever seen a baby that sleeps as little as M.  It’s really quite amazing that a 5 month old can survive on 20 minutes worth of naps and only 9 hours of interrupted sleep at night.  Seriously.

Obviously NOT baby M

M started out life sleeping like a normal newborn.  You know:  eat, poop, sleep, repeat.  As he started spending more time awake, I expected his naps to consolidate into two or three longer naps a day.  Instead, each individual nap got shorter, until I was left with four or five naps that lasted approximately long enough for me to get a drink of water or put laundry in the washing machine.  Take laundry out of the dryer and fold it all in the span of one nap?  Not on your life!

The interesting thing is, that even without sleep, he’s easily the happiest and most active baby out of our four.  He rarely fusses for more than a minute if you’re able to show him some attention, and he seriously never stops moving when he’s awake.  The problem lies in the fact that he has three other siblings who I was planning on being able to tend to, play with and cook for when their baby brother was napping.  Wishful thinking, I know.

From the “No Cry Sleep Solution” to crying it out, I think I’ve tried it all.  I’ve tried letting him sleep in every conceivable place in our home, and in every possible (safe) baby contraption we own.  I’ve also tried completely eliminating caffeine for several weeks (tough when baby never sleeps!).  Baby wearing helps to an extent, but that in itself can be tiring, and isn’t suited to times when I need to do activities that aren’t baby safe, like mowing the lawn, or frying chicken!  Nothing that worked for me in the past is helping at all, and in the meantime, everyone else in the family is starting to go batty.

So, should I just accept the fact that this little guy just doesn’t require much in the way of sleep, or is there something I’m missing?  Does anyone else have a baby with super human powers for survival on little to no sleep?  Did they ever learn to sleep, or was it a life long trait?

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