By the age I have memories of I was already sleeping through most nights, with only the occasional nightmare. But apparently those earliest years permanently destroyed my mom's ability to sleep soundly. She's still a light sleeper who wakes at the slightest noise four decades later.

When Emmett was little and he was sleeping in his own room down the hall, I would wake when I heard a change in his breathing. So horribly attuned to every time he rolled over, because he would wake up and he would be so hard to get back down. Hours of rocking.

After EM moved out I stopped worrying about putting him back down in his own bed, and just took him into my bed in the middle of the night and we both got more sleep.

When Casper was a baby I basically went to bed with her at 7:30pm. Since she was up every 2 hours until nearly a year, it was the only way to be functional in the mornings. Many is the time I was glad the most complicated thing about my job was the Library of Congress shelving system, and I wasn't, like, a brain surgeon or anything.

I'm giving up on today. Despite being very good with cold compress and really, not crying THAT much, omg, my poor face. And I kept waking up last night, so really not rested. Fuckit.

Oh, sarameg, so sorry to hear about Devi.

sarameg, I'm so sorry about Devi. Much~ma to you.

Grace and Noah are actually super sleepers and have been so since birth, pretty much. Granted, everything else about them is FUBAR at times but damn, do my kids sleep? Last night, they were both in bed at 7:05 PM with minimal fuss and they are not yet awake at 5:30. I'll wake them at 6:00. IF I gave them their druthers, they'd be asleep until 7:00. They like a solid 12 when they can get it.

The downside, is I despair of either of them every NOT peeing the bed in the middle of the night. They just sleep really really well, in spite of being either in a room with medical machinery making a racket, or being plugged into it.

Shit, I'm out of teabags.

My brother and SIL made a point of NOT trying to be quiet around the sleeping boys, using the theory that if they were used to ambient noise, they wouldn't wake at the drop of a hat. Now, given my SIL sleeps with the tv on and through my brother's air compressor roaring right under their bedroom, and my brother is known for dealing with the boys night-terrors and/or stomach bugs in the middle of the night and not remembering it in the morning, I suspect it isn't just conditioning at work.

My main issue isn't things waking me up- once truly asleep, I generally sleep like the dead. But falling asleep, especially in not-my-bed, that can have issues. I prefer white noise.

Dylan has never slept through the night, ever. We Ferberized at 10 months so I was able to stop going in and rocking/feeding him, but he still wakes up in the middle of the night to pee and then read/play himself back to sleep.

Aeryn slept through the night on her own at 6 weeks, and other than one HORRIBLE two week period on vacation where she woke up every 90 minutes every night (in the single most relaxing place in the WORLD to sleep, might I add, babies are dumb), she's never needed any kind of sleep training at all. She even still takes 2-hour naps at age 2.5! Dylan gave up napping around 18 months.

K is a pretty good sleeper, but she knows how to divert her father's attention and get an extra hour of playtime before bed. It is something of a family tradition to put the baby down for a nap and then promptly vacuum the room so that a bit of noise won't bother the kid.

Sara, I'm so sorry for your loss.

K is a pretty good sleeper, but she knows how to divert her father's attention and get an extra hour of playtime before bed.

Ha, both my kids are like that. When mom does bedtime, it's lights out at 7:45. When dad does bedtime it's closer to 8:30.