Sleep Incentive

Thank the Lord my son has been sleeping through the night for about a week! This is the longest he's ever gone, without waking up and constantly needing me for something. He's even known to pick up the monitor and talk directly into it, to call me if I don't hear him from down the hall.

It's getting me to the point that I feel desperate enough to verbally persuade him to sleep by making anything up to get him to sleep. The problem is: I am never one to manipulate or twist things around. I consider myself very honest. In fact, I cringe when my husband throws around the promise of "Santa" starting this time of year. It's not that I think letting a child believe in Santa is harmful. It's just that I think if you go too far in promoting this idea of Santa, that at some point when kids outgrow the idea and learn that it's a ruse...they will feel lied too. I don't want my son to think, "Well what else did they lie to me about?"

I grew up believing Santa...I think. I mean I knew there was a Santa, but don't remember when I stopped believing or how I found out. Maybe I was so traumatized that I blocked it out?

Well, I jumped on the Santa bandwagon seven days ago. If you've read previous posts, you'll know how much my son loves to play the drums. So my husband said one-day last week, "Hey! Maybe that's something Santa can bring you." Seeing my son's excitement was all I needed to know that we were going to have to buy a child's drum set for Christmas.

After three weeks of no sleep and such anxiety of the prospect of never getting sleep again, I finally broke. My son and I were doing our bedtime routine, and he said, "Mommy, please stay in here with me. I hate being alone."
I responded with, "Do you want to be a big boy?"
"Yes."
"Well, drum sets are for big boys, and Santa (cringe) won't bring you one if you don't start sleeping through the night."
"Okay mom, I'll really try."

I stayed with him, to sing his lullaby, and when he fell asleep...I tucked his covers and made my way to my own room. Well, that was seven nights ago....and he's slept ever since.

IN fact, tonight, feeling under the weather from a cold, I laid on the floor next to him while I sang his lullaby. I didn't want to get too close to give him germs. He popped out of bed, to rub my back...and started singing 'me' a lullaby. He's so sweet. I didn't want to ruin that sweet memory, so I waited till he was finished and asked him to get back in his bed. He said, "Oh don't you worry mommy! I'll sleep through the night!"

Hallelujah...I'm sleeping for the first time in five years! Thank you, LORD! A lot of you new readers have asked why I call myself 'wornoutwoman'....this is why. I never slept, worked full time, and still put in full-time mommy time. Now that I'm sleeping, I may change my moniker to notsowornoutwoman!