My daughter was never a good sleeper as a baby. I had friends with babies that were sleeping six and seven hours at a time each evening, and I was lucky if my daughter slept three.

It was exhausting.

It was a time in my life that I never thought would get better. We tried everything: from giving her rice cereal early, to bigger bottles at night time. Nothing was working.

I was at the end of my rope! I was googling people I could consult with - sleep doctors - to tell me if my child was normal or not. Was I the only mother in the world with an eight month old that didn't sleep long stretches, at all?

I wasn't alone. And you aren't either.

In my frantic search for helpful information, I came across something that has since changed my attitude towards baby sleep schedules. It was that, a baby's ability to sleep is a milestone just like any other. Some baby's figure it out early, and others figure it out late. It doesn't really matter which end of the spectrum your baby falls into, as long as they figure out how to be good sleepers at all.

By eleven months, my daughter was sleeping eleven and twelve hour stretches at night without waking. Though, I have to give myself a little credit somewhere for encouraging her to stay in her crib all night, and for setting regular naptimes each day.

I'm sure these things did help, but ultimately it was my daughter's lesson to learn.

Now that I'm back at square one with baby number two, I'm a lot less stressed about how he's sleeping.

He's sleeping much better than his sister did at his age, but there is nothing I have done differently with him than I did with my daughter. We are co-sleeping with him, just like I did with my daughter, and soon he will be on his own in a crib.

What it comes down to is he just likes to sleep!

Let me encourage you with this: you truly are in a phase of life that will quickly pass. Even eight months is a relatively short period of time when you look at the entirety of our lives.

Babies are unpredictable, and when it comes to their sleep habits it's no different! One thing that's sure to help us all rest easy at night? Taking a deep breath, and repeating the words, "this too shall pass."