The Elusive Sleep Monster

I would like to talk about sleep.  First of all, I miss it at times.  Don't you remember those lazy Sunday's where you stayed in bed until 9 or 10, you weren't necessarily sleeping, but you could just lie there and not have anything to do or anywhere to go.  Well, that's been replaced by a wake up call of a different caliber.  One that screams when she's ready to get up, whether you were or not.

As lots of you may know we started "sleep training" Alex about a month ago.  Until that time she had been sleeping 1-2 hours at a time, not taking consistent naps, and keeping me up all hours of the night and day.  I was so sleep deprived and stressed out that I was at a breaking point.  My nerves were shot, I looked like the walking dead, and I felt like world was crashing down around me.  Then Mark came home one night when on call saying a nurse he worked with recommended this book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child."  I can say that book pretty much changed our lives, and the life of our baby!

First of all, what were we doing wrong?  Well, what weren't we doing wrong would probably be a shorter list.  We were putting her to bed too late for one.  We would actually WAKE UP a sleeping baby to feed her at 9:30 - 10 thinking she would sleep later.  WRONG.  You've heard the phrase "Never wake a sleeping baby", well that's good advice.  Alex lost so much weight at the beginning that we were so focused on her feedings and working her sleep schedule around that.  Whoops.  We never thought that we should be working her feeding schedules around her sleep.  She was only sleeping 10-12 hours total a day, which is grossly less than she needs.  Currently she's sleeping around 16 hours a day, which is amazing.

The biggest step we needed to take was to let her cry.  Every time she cried up until that point I would get her.  She was to little to tell us what she wanted and crying was her way.  I don't regret going to her when she cried.  It gave her a sense of security and she needed that.  However, when she got older and this happened at night, well, she had me so well trained.  We started on a Saturday when Mark was home.  We let her cry and hour when we put her down for a nap.  I can tell you not only did I sob, I felt like the worst mother EVER!  She's never going to forgive me, she's going to think I abandoned her, she needs me, were only some of the thoughts on a constant ticker in my mine.  Mark did his best to keep me busy, but my heart was racing, my blood pressure was sky high, and my stress level was topped out.

The next few days felt like a never ending series of letting her cry, and of me sitting down stairs, crying and wondering if I could do this.  There was one night we let her cry 2 hours.  I thought my heart was being physically ripped from my body, my heart was breaking into a million pieces (yes this is a bit dramatic, but that's how I felt), and it took every muscle in my body not to go in there multiple times to reassure her.  A great passage in the book said that when she's crying, all she's telling me is that she's exhausted and needs her sleep.  When I started to look at it that way, it didn't become easy, but it put my mind at ease a bit.  There's something about hearing your own baby cry that makes some biological alarm in you go off, at least if you're a mother.  For some reason, dad's just don't have that same need.

We don't co-sleep & never have.  I personally don't believe in that, although we will occasionally fall asleep on the couch or in the rocking chair in her room.  I only rock her for a couple of min now and putting her down is no longer a dance of jiggling, tip toeing and praying that she doesn't wake up.  It used to take a half hour of fighting her to get her down only to lay her down in the crib and her inevitable crying the second her head hit the mattress and starting all over again.  Shifting, rocking, walking until my arms were sore.  Now we lay her down, put her nook in, pat her stomach for a couple of min and she's out.

After 4 days of torture, she pretty much got it figured out.  She goes down from bed between 6:30 - 7 pm, wakes up for a feeding anywhere from 2-5, and then usually sleeps until 7:30 - 8 am. She typically sleeps 8-10 hours at a shot, which is a million miles from where we were only a month ago.  I feel bad the days that Mark gets home late and at times get's to kiss her on her way up to bed, but we have a much happier healthy child that needs her sleep.  We're still struggling with naps, but I think she may just be a short napper.  However, this brings me to our next little problem, or what I call, the 45-min Wall!  I'll save that for another day another blog as this one is already really long.  Whatever our next step is, all I can say is if it's as tough as this, we'll make it work.