Tuesday 24 April 2012

Sleep, blessed sleep!

Sleep is very important in our household: both hubby and I enjoy sleep enormously and are definitely not morning people. I was aware that this would be challenged when babies arrived on the scene, but naively hoped that it would be very short lived!

Sleep is a very emotive subject with parents of small children because lack of it (on the parts of both parents and children) can literally make or break your day. Then there are the different approaches to sleep and the 'experts' who will argue that children should be on a strict routine from day one and must learn to sleep on their own, or the other 'experts' who argue that co-sleeping is by far the best thing for babies to develop bonds with their parents.

I have friends at both ends of the spectrum and would argue that neither approach is right or wrong, but that if the chosen options work for the individual families then all is good.

For us, co-sleeping could never be an option because I know that I would never get any sleep for worrying about the baby in my bed, so with our eldest we opted for our own version of the crying-it-out approach, which involved hubby sitting outside the door and going in to baby every couple of minutes to stroke and reassure him (all while I was in another room trying to get some sleep between feeds!) I have to say that for us, this approach worked and we have an eldest child who from three months has slept well and knows that night time is for sleeping.

However, with baby number 2 (it's supposed to be easier second time round, right?) this approach didn't work and by 3 months old we had a baby and two parents who were utterly distraught come bedtime. Nothing settled him except feeding him to sleep, but then he would wake up as soon as I put him back in his crib. Because I knew that co-sleeping would not work for me we had completely run out of ideas.

Everything reached it's peak on holiday last June when I had been lying on the floor (Baby J was in a pop-up cot) stroking, shushing and generally trying to calm him to sleep (after hubby had already tried for a long time and failed.) I suddenly, almost audibly, heard God telling me to pray. Not the kind of desperate  'please God, help him to sleep' prayers that I'd been praying up until that point, but really pray. So I did.

"Father fill J with your love and your peace" was the phrase that seemed to have been put on my heart, and which I started repeating over and over. Almost immediately, the crying ceased. I felt God telling me to keep praying; that J would start crying again, but that I should keep praying and then he would settle to sleep eventually. J started crying again, I carried on praying. I can honestly say that it felt like a real spiritual battle was taking place.

"Father fill J with your love and your peace." As I prayed those words over and over I became aware that my child is God's child; that He wanted to love and protect him as much, and more even, than I did. I realised that God knows our love for our children because He gave us that love.

Eventually J stopped crying and fell asleep. We had a few more nights of those prayers and slowly my little one started to calm down at bed times. It didn't make everything perfect but he seemed from then on to settle into a better pattern of sleep.

So why do I write this now? Because the other night I was reminded of those prayers as my little one decided to start protesting at bedtime again. It didn't take long repeating those prayers before he fell asleep though and after a couple of nights we were back to normal (which involves a few minutes of protesting before he falls asleep cuddling his teddy!).

There will be people who will argue I should just have picked my crying baby up and given him a cuddle. Maybe they are right. But just maybe, the whole situation taught me to remember that praying to our Father for His intervention, is the best thing I can do for my children, and that His loving arms are best of all.

1 comment:

  1. This is amazing Rach. what a cool story - and great reminder of the power of prayer - and spiritual battles taking place. i'm glad he's sleeping better. xx

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