I took Harley being a great little sleeper for granted

Getting a baby to sleep seems like it should be the easiest thing in the world – they’re tired, right? So they’ll sleep? Wrong. Our daughter Harley who is ten months on Sunday was a dream sleeper from the moment she was born. I remember frantic calls to the health visitors and midwives in the early days because she wouldn’t wake for hours and supposedly you’re meant to feed a new born every two to three hours.

Well sometimes, Harley would go six hours without feeding and for love nor money, I could not get her to wake up.

From about eight weeks she was sleeping through the night until about 4.30am and I was immensely satisfied that I had a ‘good sleeper’.

I would often hear tired mums on our NCT Whatsapp group talk about their awful nights detailing how often their baby got up during the night.

I would feel awful for them but so relieved we weren’t in the same position.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, Harley woke up during the night, sometimes frequently, but it never seemed as bad as others.

But boy, are we paying the price for that now.

She’s still not a bad sleeper and will wake around 6am most days, but she’s become an incredibly fussy one.

The creak of a floor board can wake her now, even though we’ve never tiptoed around her.

She’ll wake, sometimes three times a night and they’ll be nothing she wants other than to sleep on one of us until she’s fallen back into a deep sleep.

God help us if we try to get her to selfsettle – it just won’t happen.

By god is she strong – physically and mentally.

Now she can crawl, stand and pull herself up, Matt and I stand no chance of getting her down and keeping her in her cot.

She is extremely headstrong and she likes to get her own way – I have no idea where she gets it from…

Although I was chatting to my dad the other day and he made a comment.

I have no idea what he meant when he said: ‘Payback hurts Cheryl, payback hurts.’