Barren Mare

Eyes wide shut

It's been a very, very interesting couple of days. Lots to tell and share about Project Sleep! Unfortunately, given the constraints on my time, I think I'm going to have to deal with it by way of another series of posts. Which I appreciate is possibly tedious- but perhaps we can at least pretend it gives a little frisson of suspense to the proceedings.   

After I wrote that last post, I flailed around trying to figure out what to do. I made up my mind that co-sleeping, as someone helpfully suggested, is really not a viable approach. For starter's, I am a fairly restless sleeper and not being able to roll around as much as I'd like really hampers my sleeping mojo. Secondly, while I reckon it's OK for the odd hour or two in the morning, we really don't have the right set-up in terms of fully adhering to safety guidelines for full time co-sleeping. Nor am I particularly keen to have to reorganise in that direction, giving that the ultimate aim is to get Botany sleeping peacefully in her own room. And lastly, any change to the sleeping arrangements would necessitate re-settling the warm doggy bundle elsewhere, no doubt to his considerable chagrin. I know Little Guy would adapt to this, eventually, but we both feel like he's already been sidelined rather a lot since the baby arrived and it just feels kind of...wrong.  Especially since, again, the goal is to get the baby sleeping happily in her own bed.

Talking it over with E., I quickly came to the conclusion that our options were as follows:

a. do nothing- i.e. preserve the status quo and hope that we occasionally had a "good" night in terms of few wake-ups until she grows out of it, however long that takes. And thatwe didn't die of sleep deprivation in the meantime. 

b. sleep training- pick a method, follow through consistently and give it a week. 

It was pretty much a no-brainer; I had already decided that things couldn't go on as they had been. So embracing option b, it was then a matter of figuring out how best to go about fixing the problem. But again I hesitated. I was worried that, based on what I had already seen, crying it out was simply not going to work with Botany. Too upset! Too distraught!  Too much ripping out of my maternal heart with a blunt instrument!

However, the more I pondered the situation and gnawed on my distaste for having to proceed via some sort of "crying it out"programme, the more I realised that I didn't really have any real idea about what that method entailed, exactly: other than Ferber is reviled by many and the process just sounded rather unpleasant. Can we all just heave a collective shudder at the term "Ferberizing"?  [By the way, thank you to those of you who emailed me information about other methods such as NCSS and PU/PD, if I may adopt those sleepy acronyms.] Such was my trepidation that I almost gave up without really attempting any form of crying based sleep stuff in earnest.

But then something happened to make me think that perhaps Botany and I probably could at least endure some crying, after all. I was attempting to get her down to sleep, and she was, um, protesting. It was nearly, though not quite as horrible as our first encounter with crycrycry and although I had a vague notion that I should probably wait another five or ten minutes before going back in, I was on the verge of caving in (see above: heart, spoon, rip).

Then the phone rang. It was my mother, calling me to tell me that while out cycling, my dad had been hit by a car.*  [He's OK but concussed, bruised and very shaken up. Another reminder that wearing a bike helmet may in fact save your life.] By the time I got off the phone with my mom ten minutes later, Botany was asleep. She slept just long enough for me to scrape myself off the ceiling and take a deep, deep breath.

I should also add that there was another thing that made me consider the approach in a different light than I might have otherwise done: your comments. When I hit publish last time, I had sort of expected that people would write something comforting along the lines of "oh yes, the crying thing? It's not for everyone and for whatever reason, we couldn't/wouldn't/didn't do it either."  I was surprised and then reassured that so many of you were able to offer a range of perspectives and ideas, all framed in a positive and non-judgmental way. So *mwah mwah* to you internets- for throwing a lifeline yet again.

And so the next day, I found myself taking the hitherto unthinkable step of actually buying Ferber's book.

 

   

The tears at the edge of the world

The uncharted waters of "crying it out" is a place that I had hoped we would never have to go. It wasn't so much that I was philosophically opposed to the notion of CIO; I realise that in some cases and for some babies, it does work. But for us?  For Botany?  From what I had encountered during the few abortive attempts to get her to nap on her own in her cot during the day, I was pretty sure she fell into the "tension increaser category". In other words, to paraphrase the wisdom of Moxie, she cranks herself up and will just get progressively more and more upset.

So the realm of CIO, particularly at night, struck me as an avenue fraught with peril; a route I would only venture in absolutely dire necessity. And up until a few nights ago, I was optimistic that it could be avoided altogether. I could carry on with with my Pantley/Makeitupasyou goalong approach.* Sure, she is waking up a lot and the wake ups are getting more frequent, but she would always go back down, eventually, right?  Sure, I am getting tired, but I am coping, right?

Then came the other night. I had to end a telephone call with my mother at 9pm to go nurse an awakened baby back down. She woke up again at 11pm, just as the film was reaching its thrilling denouement. She woke up at 1am, just as I had finally gotten to sleep. Each time, it took a half an hour to resettle her.

When she woke up at 2am, I sent E. down. I turned off the monitor and lay in the dark, crying a few exhausted and exasperated tears of my own. He came back at 2.30am.

Is she asleep, I asked.  Um, not exactly, he said.

I went down at 2.45 am and nursed her back down for another half an hour.

When the monitor kicked off at 3.30 am, I decided enough was enough. I went downstairs, comforted her in the cot, and then left the room. I went next door into the living room, sat on the sofa , vowing to give it ten minutes before I went back in. I think I managed about six before I had to go retrieve a howling, sobbing, hysterical baby. When I picked her up, she wrapped her chubby little arms around me, clinging onto my neck for dear life, her body shaking with hiccups of distress. I took her upstairs with me- she nursed frantically for about ten minutes before falling into a deep sleep, whereupon I was able to gently transfer her into the cradle next to our bed and she didn't wake up for three hours.       

The next day, I felt sort of shaky and unsettled. What had just happened there?  Was I a terrible mother for subjecting my child to that treatment? Or was I total wuss for failing to follow through?  I felt dreadful about it, so I mentally parked thinking about it until bedtime.  She woke up about twenty minutes after going down for the night. I went back in and soothed her down. Half an hour later, she woke again, as we were in the middle of eating dinner. E. went in- whereupon she screamed and cried and wailed nonstop for twenty minutes while he held her and tried to comfort her.

E. finally came out looking a bit frazzled. He asked me if we should put the light on to check if she was OK. No, I said, she's fine. I think she's just pissed off that she's not getting boobed back to sleep. Unfortunately by this point, she was again a hysterical hiccuping mess, and I gave in and did just that.

My baby girl, my darling baby girl.  What am I to do?  I know that sometimes, crying might be the only way forward. And I do believe that some crying could be endured. But my heart quails at this type. This is the type of crying you do while sitting on the floor of the bathroom after the IVF cycle has failed- the kind that takes over your whole body, with sob after sob. How can I bear to hear my baby crying that way?  I don't think I can. But I want her to learn how to soothe herself back to sleep. I don't want to be up every other hour night after night, nursing endlessly. Even knowing it will pass eventutally is not enough to ward off the waves of bleakness that wash over me when I contemplate that prospect.

*Am I just thick, or does anyone else find it rather difficult to work out exactly what the "solution" is in the No-Cry Sleep Solution? Large chunks of the book seem to be devoted to self-congratulatory text about how well "it" works, followed by some common sense suggestions which thus far have gotten us pretty much nowhere, followed by an approach which does, in fact, involve crying.    

Project Runway

Can you stand another post about sleep?  It is, after all, my favourite subject at the moment.

The other night, Botany rolled twice sometime between 11pm and 4am- both times she managed to get her arm stuck out through the cot bar, whereupon she woke up freaked out and yelling. I ran down and scooped her up; poor baby, it did look like she gotten herself into a bit of a pickle. As I sat in the chair nursing her back to sleep for the second time, I had one of those 3am-type epiphanies. Probably because it was, in fact, 3am.

I had earlier noted that Botany only ever rolls to the left. It occured to me that she's getting her arm stuck in the bars every time because when she goes to sleep, I'm putting her down smack in the middle of the cot. Essentially, she doesn't have enough clearance to get herself over without coming up against the side of the cot. Since it is a given that at some point in the night she will roll, it dawned on me that what she needs is a bit more mattress runway to get over- but to stay clear of the bars.  Well, duh, I thought. So obvious, but so hard to see when one is accustomed to doing the exact same routine night after night.

The following night, I laid her down carefully, carefully; strategically positioning her little body for optimum rollage room. And hey presto! About 1am, she rolled and stayed asleep in a happy bundle in the middle of the cot, whereupon she slept until 5.30am. In fact, I wouldn't have even known she was on her tummy except that E. peeked in on her en route while letting the dog out.

"She's on her tummy!" he announced to me when he got back upstairs.

"Is she asleep?" I muttered from somewhere under the duvet.

"Yes. But she's on her tummy!," he reiterated.

"Good," I said, ready to go back to sleep myself.

"Are you sure it's OK?! On her tummy?!" he asked.

"Yes. Yes, it's all good," I said as the dog fixed his nest at the back of my knees.

The next morning I congratulated myself for being so clever clever clever.  Problem sorted, I thought, a trifle smugly. Thus bringing down the wrath of the sleep furies, who smote me with three middle-of- the night wake ups for two days thereafter, the cause of which seemed to be totally unrelated to rolling. (I think teething is becoming an issue.) Ugh. Ugh and bleeech.

The good news is that in the last couple days, Botany has now learned how to get herself back over; this seems to result in some very strange cot perambulations, such that I sometimes come in to answer her cry to find her bewildered and turned 360 degrees from where I put her down. She's so determined to wriggle around that it would almost be amusing (if it weren't so damned exhausting).

You know, prior to Botany's birth, I always treated talk of "sleepless nights" as one of those trite cliches of parenting- right up there with "your life will never be the same". The sort of thing that washes over you as something to be expected when you have a baby but which is quite meaningless until you come to discover exactly how sleepless "sleepless" can be, and that it really is nights. As in plural. 

Something which I have come to find soothing is that it's happening to so many other people at the same time. Often I'll sit there in the dimly lit room at two in the morning, nursing and rocking; enjoying holding the baby while also desperately wishing I could just go back to sleep. I think about how many others are up right then, doing exactly the same thing. It's sort of nice knowing someone else is out there, awake in the dark with a child in their arms, parenting as best they can.

There were four in the bed and the little one said...

My prediction was correct- Botany learning how to roll over was the start of some dreadful sleepless nights. To be clear, it's not the risk of SIDS that I was/am concerned about. Rather, the problem is that Botany, having rolled herself over, can't figure out how to get back again. That would fine if she were quite happy to sleep on her tummy, but evidently, that is not so. The night after I wrote that last post, Botany repeatedly rolled in her sleep, in her cot, in her sleeping bag. Every time she woke up to find herself on her tummy, she would freak out and start shrieking.  And then I'd have to nurse back down for a half hour before she would go back to sleep. Rinse, lather, repeat. 

I don't know if it's because she has hit a key developmental milestone or what, but in general, sleep has gone to hell in a handcart around here. I rather blithely assumed we'd gotten over the hump of the four month sleep regression relatively intact and were in the clear for a while. Oh ha ha ha. No. All of a sudden, she's fighting to go down at her normal 7pm bedtime, she's waking up before the dreamfeed at 10.30/11pm, she's refusing to go back to sleep after the dreamfeed, she's awake at 1am and 3am and 4am.

As always, I resort to bringing her upstairs to bed with us for a couple of hours in the morning but it's a little crowded, and I have to shove the dog down to the foot of the bed where he promptly nestles himself on top of my legs, while my right arm is pinioned above my head, curled around Botany as she clamps on to my boob for dear life. It is decidedly uncomfy.

I think I could live with all that, but the early evening sleep battles are particularly wearing. Having come to really rely and depend on the 7-11pm slot for some much needed recharging of the batteries (not to mention eating/showering/blogging/cleaning the house/etc.) I am feeling exhausted and frustrated by turns.  Things would be more bearable if I had a rested, refreshed happy baby in the morning, but au contraire. It's fussyville around here much of the time- I think she is bored and frustrated that she is not able to do things yet. Even though I am pretty hard core about getting out no matter what the weather, conditions have been so horrendous that even I must concede defeat, and we've been stuck in the house a lot. A recipe for a fairly miserable time to be had by all.

So, yeah, I know it will pass, but while it's happening, it basically sucks ass.

It's hard, in the face of all the above, not to feel a little burnt out some days. I think it's part of the ongoing legacy of infertility that, having gotten to the other side, you feel like you're never allowed to complain for a single second about any aspect of parenting. Indeed, I am conscious that I am so lucky to have this time with Botany-so lucky to have her at all.  But I'm only human, too, and I came to the conclusion the other night that I've got to start to give myself a bit of a break in terms of blowing off steam once in awhile. That it's OK to alternately savour her delicious babyness and to long for things to get a little easier. Of course, I realise that "easier" is all relative- that the current challenges are likely to be replaced with other dilemmas and problems- but hopefully ones involving something other than the torture of broken sleep.