Barren Mare

Sitting up in the night

Honestly, I don't mean to spurn the blog in favour of other activities, such as trawling for discount baby sunsuits in the local mega mall, or wandering the vast vast aisles of Super Ta*get- but I keep looking up and the remaining days of our visit are dwindling away.

As always, I am pushed for time as there a little chore I promised to do for my parents while they take the small fry out for a walk. But first! My burning question to you, oh internets, is this: what the hell do I do now that Botany has learned to sit up in her cot at night?  She has started waking up repeatedly (again) at all hours, and I can tell from the pitch of the squeaks that there ain't no way she is going back to sleep. Sure enough, every time I go in, she is BOLT UPRIGHT in the Pack N'Play. It seems that she's routinely sitting up every time she wakes up and since she hasn't figured out how to get back down again ("lie down? what is this "lie down", mummy? I think not"), I have to keep rescuing her.   

The problem with the sitting is that she remains just a tad unstable at times- at the moment I am not too concerned about her toppling over because she simply falls into the soft mesh of the Pack N' Play.  But  when we get home, there are the scary hard sides of a real crib to clonk into- I keep worrying that she's going to stage dive backwards before I have a chance to come get her, concussing herself on the  cot bars.  I suppose one solution is to let her sleep in the Pack N'Play at home for awhile, although this is not attractive for a number of reasons.

Am I fretting about nothing? I'm assuming other babies must do this (although none that I actually know of, since apparently everybody in my group has a child sleeping 12 hours a night without making a peep.) Will the fact that it's a couple more weeks before we get home mean that she'll be a super pro sitter and thus be less likely to lose her balance?  Will she eventually quit this phase of sitting up in the night on her own, or do I have to bite the bullet and embark on another round of sleep training? Will she simply replace the sitting up with standing up, thus causing me to completely lose my mind altogether?

Helllllpppp meeeeee.

Zzzzzzz Wakey wakey zzzzz

Right, one more post about sleep and then I promise I will diversify and talk about something else for a bit, like poop or preparing for a transatlantic flight.

As I mentioned earlier, in attempting to sort out the early waking problem, based on Ferber's assertion that most babies are really capable of only so much time in bed per night, I realised we should look at Botany's overall sleep schedule.

Now, I know a lot of people say a later bedtime is not the answer- particularly based on the Weissbluth approach that "sleep begets sleep". Except in Botany's case, we'd been operating on this sort of early bedtime philosophy without much success. Up until recently, she was going to bed around 6.30pm and no later than 7pm. In addition to the night wakings, she always seemed to wake up about 5.30 am no matter what, then go back to sleep once I brought her up into bed with us until about 7am. After reading Ferber, I wondered if maybe the problem was that she just isn't able to sleep that much at night and I decided to try to push her bedtime back a bit later to see if might result in either reduction of the night wakings or else a slightly later wake up time.

My aim was to shoot for a 7.30 pm bedtime and see if that made any difference. According to Ferber's approach, in order for the shift to work, this would also mean moving everything else a bit later, including all the naps, and then sticking to those times regardless of whether any of the sleep over the course of the 24 hour was disrupted.

Except...unfortunately, I've pretty much totally failed to achieve this. We just can't seem to do it. The irony is that having struggled for months now to get this baby to go to sleep when I want her to, I find it is equally difficult trying to keep her awake when she is tired. It probably doesn't help that we take all her naps together, and as I'm usually very weary myself, I find it hard to resist the temptation to just go lie down with her. It also doesn't help if we go out in the car or the buggy or the Ergo, she'll immediately fall asleep. So basically, keeping her awake to a certain time means staying in the house-which I think we both find boring and which just creates more fretful fussiness.

As for bedtime, well- let's just say that the half hour leading up to nursing her down for the night is usually a real low point in the day. We just about get through bath time but then she is screamy hot mess while getting into her jammies. It's not particularly pleasant for E., who most often assumes these pre-bedtime duties. And as for me; I'm kind of done by then. Don't get me wrong, I love my child with the ferocity of a thousand hungry tigers. But after over twelve hours on my own with her, during which we have been together virtually every single second, much of it with her physically strapped to my body? Knowing she'll be up again at 4am wanting my attention?  Yeah. I'm ready for her to be asleep so I can have a break. So the upshot is that her bedtime presently remains as 7pm.

My question for people with later bedtime babies: HOW do you do it? I mean, what do you actually do with the child all evening to keep them up, without ensuing whiny meltdowns? Or are most babies not as fractious as this by 6.30? I suppose it must also make a difference if you're working and haven't seen the baby all day but I do wonder how others manage.   

Eventually, I realised it was probably pointless worrying about it because the time change when we travel will throw everything out of whack as it is. We're going to be in Florida for over six weeks (yeeeehaaaw!) so I'm hoping that in adjusting to the new time zone, we have a chance to remold the schedule a little bit. And I'm also hoping that it will help to have my parents on hand during the tricky parts of the day when we need to keep Botany awake. Or at least that I can hand her to my mother and hide down at the boat dock. I'll worry about what happens when we come home later.

As far as the naps go- thanks for the assurances on that front. I've try to give up fretting about it so much right now. What I realised is that although it would be nice to have a wee opportunity to "get things done" duing the day while Botany sleeps soundly in her cot, usually what I most want to do when I get a chance is...have a nap myself. So it seemed a little bit of unnecessary aggravation for everyone to endure the whole CIO palaver in an attempt to get her to sleep during the day in her bed, when in fact I quite like curling up with her-(although perhaps not two or three times a  day, and perhaps it would be somewhat preferable were she not clamped on to my right boob the entire time).

It would be nice to have some neat conclusion to all this: my child's sleep problems all solved! But in all honesty, I suspect the course of sleep will probably not run smoothly here for some time. For example, over the weekend, someone turned the switch in Botany's head to "babble mode" and all she wants to do is treat the world (or at least E., the neighbours, the cashier at the super market and the dog) to her new vocal stylings- da dada dah DAH daa um gagga da DA DAD AH DA DA. So it wasn't unexpected that she woke up at 11pm giving us all another rendition.  Being so so tired myself and still not completely over my cold, I went ahead with giving her a feed just so I could go back to bed. I also rather hoped she would then sleep longer than 4am...but it was not to be.

One day at a time. One night at a time. And trying to remember that I'll probably look back on this at some point and wonder why I was in such a hurry to sleep when there was a sweet baby for me to rock and hold.

Notes from the sleep trenches

Sorry for the delay in updating but uggggh. I'bd god anudda cold. And this time there are no family members on hand to spell me so I can get a little break during the day. It's the third time I've been sick this winter, and frankly, I am fed up. Plus, whereas before she was oblivious to my sputtering, Botany now looks alarmed and then cries every time I emit one of my frequent coughs.  That should tell you something about the ferocity of my barking hack.

Anyway. Sleep training a la Botany is best summed up as an ongoing work in progress. Because that's the thing, isn't it? Even once you have the sleep basics down, any little blip (teething, illness, travel) can throw everything out of whack again so easily. And life, as we all know,is full of little blips- (see above). Having said that, though, at the time of this writing, most nights she is going to sleep on her own in her cot without a whimper at 6.45pm and sleeping through to...um...4.30am. Which on the face of it may not sound like a big improvement. Really though, in the big scheme of things, it is.

For all my sniping about Pantley, one helpful thing I did take from her book was the notion of thinking about sleep goals- bearing in mind that my ultimate ideal of 12 hours of continual slumber on 500 count Egyptian cotton sheets, followed by breakfast in bed served by Eric Bana my adoring partner is probably not on the cards. So, working toward reasonable, achievable goals, here is what I came up with when we began sleep training.

1. Bedtime-ideally between 7-7.30 pm but more importantly, enough of this business of nurse-to-sleep then sneaking out then going back in half an hour later and doing it all again when she wakes up. As she was inevitably doing.

2. Night feeding-

(a) dropping the 10.30-11pm dreamfeed, on the basis that she doesn't really need it and it's not constructive to have routine night wakings for feeding at her age. Plus it means I can go to bed at a reasonable hour.

(b) no more than one night feed between midnight and 4am, and going straight back to sleep afterwards. 

3. Waking for the day no earlier than 6am.

4.  Napping- in the cot at least once a day for an hour.    

Now, one thing I liked about Ferber's method is his suggestion that although both sleep associations and night- time hunger issues need to be addressed at some point, you don't necessarily need to do both at the same time.  Handy, since you'll perhaps surmise from the above that I had decided I would continue with one night feeding, at least for the time being.

My reasoning was this: firstly, it seemed to me that if Botany sleeps from 7pm to 4am, it would perhaps not be unexpected that she might be be hungry after 9 hours. I know the official line is that babies her age can probably go a bit longer. However, a recent visit to the health visitor indicated to me that Botany is perhaps tending to the slim side, with her weight dropping a bit since we started solids. She's doing not badly on the solid stuff but not exactly packing it away yet and I'm not going to force feed her. My view on it is that until she is older and a wee bit heavier, I'll continue to provide a night feeding, if she asks for it, as long as it is a reasonable stretch of time since she went down. I figure it can't hurt in terms of keeping up milk supply, either.   

The other main factor is that the notion the idea of doing any sort of sleep training which involves the baby crying for any length of time at 4am makes me want to stick my head in a blender. Four o'clock in the morning? Crying?  Nooooooo. One day, we may need to go there, but until then...no. Just...no.

The other thing I quite liked about Ferber's approach is that when dealing with the sleep association issues, you don't necessarily need to stop doing things like nursing the baby into a stupor at bedtime- as long as you ensure that the baby goes down awake (or at least enough so to know she is being put into the cot). To which I say, huzzah! I like solutions which include things that are currently working. (Disclaimer: Ferber does point out that if it's causing a real problem, bedtime and nursing may need to be separated a bit further, but in our case, it ain't broke, so...)

So- the plan is: still nursing almost-to-sleep and still feeding in the night (once). You with me? 

Interestingly, the sleep association part of the approach proved surprisingly easy. The first night, she cried half heartedly and with decreasing intensity for about 40 minutes. Then she rolled over, grabbed her lovey and fell asleep. Compared to the previous banshee howling, it was a walk in the park.  The next night she grizzled slightly for about five minutes. And then the third night -and every night since-straight to sleep. I actually put her down now with the little bedroom light still on, then rattle about for a bit shutting the curtains before kissing her goodnight. She looks up at me, her eyes roll back into her head and she's out. It's fantastic. And no sneaking about! 

Dropping the eleven pm dreamfeed on the other hand, proved a little bit more problematic. It took about a week and some slightly more hideous crying sessions, one lasting...well, a long time.  Longer than we would have liked. But this brings us to a very key point: in my experience, it is important to be clear that if you are going to adopt an approach which involves behavioural modification, then it is absolutely crucial to be consistent and see it through.  Letting the baby cry for half an hour or whatever and then going in to feed /rock/etc. is a bad idea, because it sends a conflicting message and at the end of the day, you've achieved nothing other than misery all around. As Ferber says, you might as well just go ahead and feed the baby in the first place and skip the crying altogether.   

In order to work to the overall sleep goals without being a rigid ogre about it, what I find is essential is an assessment at each wake-up of what is needed to get her back to sleep as well as what we are prepared to do (or put up with). Has she just gone down, clean, fed, burped and cosy?  Has she woken up because she's rolled into a weird spot but is otherwise fine?  Has she woken up scared because the dog just barked his fool head off at something?  Is she possibly hungry?  Is she maybe teething or sick? Is it 5am and she'll be up for the day in an hour or so anyway? And above all, if we start down the road of doing a controlled crying session, are we up for seeing it through, even if it means two hours of wailing?

If for whatever reason the answer to the last one is no, then we just don't go there. Admittedly, that too risks sending something of an inconsistent message in the larger scheme of things. But what I have found is that as long we stick to the basic rule of thumb: that is, as long she goes to sleep on her own in her crib, then it usually doesn't matter so much how we get there- even if it occasionally means picking up for a cuddle, back-rubbing or feeding.      

Anyway. With some reluctance, the dreamfeed was dropped, and I was correct in thinking she doesn't appear to have really needed it after all, since she seems quite happy to sleep through until at least 4.30 or so. It does seem that dealing with the sleep association issue was the key, since now when she wakes up (as she does do several times a night) she seems able to put herself back to sleep without too much trouble.

So: goals 1 and 2 are met- for the most part, since we do have the odd night where it doesn't all go to plan. Goals 3 and 4 remain...aspirational.  The change in the sleep scheduling, which I think may be required in order to reach number 3, has not been terribly successful (more on that next time).

As for naps? Oh, bah. Bah and boo. I don't feel too badly about it because Ferber reassures me that daytime nap associations can be separated from nighttime sleep associations, so basically, I've given up on fixing the nap thing for the time being. But please, could someone tell me I am not the only person whose baby will only nap either in the buggy or with a boob in her mouth? Because I do feel like a bit of failure on that front.

And now I'bd off to blow my stuffy dose. Oh, and did I mention we're getting on a plane to Florida next week?  Botany's first international flight: the prospect of which fills me with some trepidation and for which I really, really need to be feeling better than I am now. 

Solving my child's sleep problems

"In particular, there should be no sneaking about."

                 - Dr Richard Ferber, Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems

Ah. Ferber. Dr Richard Ferber. Richard. May I call you Richard?  I bet some people call you Dick, but let's not go there.

First of all, I am glad I read the book. It would have been easy to write off Ferber as the "CIO guy"; but as people have already commented, that description is actually inaccurate and somewhat unfair. Admittedly, going the Ferber route will almost invariably involve some crying; his basic approach involves changing the baby's learned behaviours and that usually entails a certain amount of resistance from the child.  However as I discovered, there is a lot more to it than simply letting the baby cry herself to sleep.

After he explains in some detail (but clearly, I thought) the biology of sleep; that is, how infant and adult sleep cycles work, Ferber goes on to identify possible causes of sleep problems. And there were three points here that made me go "a-ha!". Or at least, "Ah. Hmmm."    

Sleep associations:

You know, I had heard all about sleep associations almost as as soon as Botany was born. The post-natal group had a whole session on sleep, featuring dire predictions courtesy of the practice nurse. God forbid, you nursed the baby to sleep or drove around with her in the car seat! Because that would be the only way you'd ever get that kid to sleep! Then what would you do! You'd have to go out at 2am in the car!

I remember hearing all this and rolling my eyes, thinking it was a lot of complete bollocks. And sure enough, for the first five months or so, nursing to sleep worked a treat. OK, so she woke up sometimes about an hour after I put her down and I'd have to go back in and nurse her down again for ten mintues or so, and maybe another or twice a night, but she needed to eat anyway, and always went straight back down afterwards and what was all this fuss about sleep associations. Humpfh.

Except...oh. Right. Rolling over, etc, arrived and then it turned into waking three times a night or more and not going straight back down.

Enter Ferber. He uses a helpful analogy to explain what may be going on. Imagine you go to sleep every night with your cosy duvet and pillow, and then someone comes in while you are sleeping and  steals your pillow. Not only that, but they move your sleeping bod to the living room floor and lock you out of your bedroom. So when you wake up (as you will certainly do, since everyone experiences partial wakings during the night), you find yourself cold, uncomfy and pissed off- on the living room floor! And of course you'd be crying for someone to come let you back into your bedroom. Because how the hell are you supposed to sleep on the damn floor? Bastards stole your pillow!

Ferber's point is that it's a recipe for disaster when you use props such as nursing or rocking to get the baby to sleep, then quietly sneak away; because invariably, the wee one is disconcerted to wake up to find things have changed. His method stresses that the baby has to go to sleep, on her own, so that there are no nasty surprises later on in the night when she needs to put herself back to sleep. And you know- given the pattern of Botany's wake-ups, this suddenly made a lot of sense to me. (I know Pantley also talks about sleep associations but evidently not as clearly, since I didn't get it at all. Probably by that point I was glazed over from reading endless anecdotes about "her little Coleton".) 

So step one: change the sleep association. In other words, get Botany to go to sleep on her own in her cot without the boob- so that when she wakes in the night, she doesn't need the boob to go back down.

Night time feedings:

Stop feeding the baby! says Doc F.  His advice is that babies of a certain age can go for so many hours without food and don't need to be chowing down in the night. In fact, it may screw with their digestive systems and contribute to their sleeplessness. If the baby is waking up repeatedly for food, it may be because she has formed the habit of eating at those times. He says it's fine to go on feeding the baby if you want to, but it's a choice, not a biological necessity.

I confess I cringed a bit at this one. Again, not a new concept but one I resisted, because I am not totally comfortable with the the idea of some expert making sweeping generalisations about how much my daughter needs to eat. And if there is any doubt that she might be looking for a feed, I simply cannot bear to think of my baby lying there crying and hungry.  However, on closer reflection, I had to concede that in our case, he may be on the right track with this one, too. For some weeks now, Botany has been waking up bang on the hour of the dreamfeed, then barely eating anything. Same with the 4am wake up.

Step two- cut out all routine night feeds (for example the dreamfeed) and try to cut down on any other unnecessary feeds. At least, that is the theory. Unfortunately, and rather mindfuckingly, Ferber points out that at least intially when making this change, the baby WILL probably be hungry because she is used to eating (even if she doesn't NEED the food). Which brings me back to real unease at a possibly hungry baby lying there crying. Ferber does offer a method whereby you try to stretch the time between feeds-though it's not entirely clear how you are meant to fill the hours of interval with a wakeful, hungry baby. Cuddling? Crying? A rousing chorus of "Wheels on the Bus"?    

Sleep scheduling:

Firstly, take a reality check on how long the baby actually needs to sleep, sez our man Richard F. This idea of sleeping a full 12 hours a night, with three or so hours of napping during the day? Nope. According to the doctor, the average amount of sleep over a 24 hour period for a baby of Botany's age is about 13.5 hours. He claims most babies sleep about 10 hours a night and 2-3 hours during the day- but that can vary depending on the child and what sort of sleep schedule they are on. What I found useful here was to keep a rough log of Botany's sleep patterns for a couple of days to see how much (and when) she was actually asleep. The result startled me somewhat. She goes to bed about 6.45 pm every night. Factoring in all the wake-ups for night feeds, she was sleeping about 9 or so hours. Regardless of when she was last fed at night, her standard wake up time was about 5am, whereupon I would bring her into bed and we would all snooze until 7-7.30am. Overall, it works out at about 11.5 hours. Then three naps during the day of 45 minutes each. Result: she is sleeping an average number of hours (13.5ish) but the sleep is not as consolidated as it could be.

Step three: fiddle with the sleep schedule to see if night time sleep (and thereafter naps) can be possibly be consolidated. Ferber also stresses that any such changes need to take into account the schedule across the whole 24 hour period. It's not enough to, say, just move bedtime later. 

There we go- three succinct steps to sleep heaven!  Sounds so easy and straightforward, no?  Next time, I'll tell you how it's actually going.   

Sleepless in Achandanachochterchaocter

This is a very quick update; lest you think I have run screaming into the sleepless night. No, we are actually just having our short break away- we ended up booking something at the last minute. In the middle of nowhere! The arse end of arse in the Highlands! In February! When nothing is open! When it rains all the time!  On the upside, the house we rented is absolutely gorgeous (with underfloor heating, ahhhh. Love it.) And it does have an internet connection. However, as the car was absolutely crammed to the gunnels with all our dog & baby crap, we only brought the one computer (E.'s). Thus I have not been at liberty to spend the usual amount of time churning out guff painstakingly crafting blog entries.

We're heading home tomorrow and I will try to write of our ongoing sleep saga then. Progress has been...uneven.  Of course, going away at this juncture was probably not the cleverest of moves. Wait, strike that as well. It was more like downright stupid in terms of trying to adhere to a routine and develop good, consistent nightime sleep habits for Botany. Oh well.  She seems to be enjoying the change of scene, plus all the walks in the effingfreezing bracing fresh air, which makes delightful little roses of colour bloom on her sweet chubby cheeks. Even if it doesn't necessarily assist in helping her sleep any better at night.   

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.

Up and down the stairs

I'm feeling much better now. Having struggled on for a few more days with the cold, I ended up speaking to one of my new fellow pram pushing friends, who happens to also be a ear nose and throat surgeon (a handy person to know.) I mentioned that the pharmacist had recommended, um, nothing. My friend rolled her eyes and told me that certain topical decongestents were OK, and to toodle myself forthwith to get a nasal spray. Which I duly did and pretty much immediately felt a lot better.

The recovery comes in the nick of time because the ongoing sleep weirdness combined with illness was becoming a complete ass-kicker. Last night went like this:

• 10pm- Botany grizzles herself half awake. I go ahead and dreamfeed her.
• 1am- Botany grizzling over the monitor. I leave her for 10 minutes, then go downstairs to try to settle her. She thrashes around while nursing, so I pick her up and she belches hugely. Back to sleep.
• 1.30 am.  Or not asleep. Grizzle grizzle wail wail. I wait it out for a bit. Silence.
• 2 am. Awake. Griiiiiizzzzle. I go down and feed her, again. Back to bed for me, finally, at 2.30 am.
• 5 am. Awake! Hi, Mummy. Chat, chat, chat and coo. I take her upstairs to bed with us to cadge an extra hour or so of sleep and mercifully she goes back down until 7am. 

In a previous post on the travails of Botany's sleeping, a couple of people mentioned the possible approach of turning off the baby monitor/earplugs. An attractive notion, to be sure. The problem is that we live in a townhouse-type arrangement, with the nursery down on the floor below. For the first couple months, the baby slept in our room for at least part of the night in the hanging cradle but eventually I concluded that we were simply waking each other up, so I transitioned her to her cot for the whole night. We need to keep our bedroom door shut so the dog doesn't go wandering around, and we also keep the nursery door shut to muffle out any random nighttime barking by Little Guy (which happens from time to time). So I am not completely certain that I would hear her if she was really in distress.

Actually, I confess that a couple of weeks ago, I accidentally turned the monitor off when I went to bed and didn't realise until I woke up at quarter past five wondering why it had been such a quiet night. When I turned it on, sure enough she was awake and "eh-eh-ehing" away, although not howling her head off. I've since been wondering (and feeling rather guilty) about how long she might have been lying there while I slept on oblivous.

I suppose part of the problem is that I don't have the will to leave her to grizzle for more than ten minutes or so. Part of me reasons that if she's not actually crying and if the noise is not escalating as such, then there is no pressing need for me to go pick her up, and eventually she will go back to sleep. This happens frequently. Sometimes I get all the way down the stairs to the nursery door and just as I am about to go in, she goes quiet.

So I don't rush in. But after a certain amount of time elapses, the more primal part of me goes into mothering autopilot: the baby needs me! She is all tiny and lonely in her cot and is calling out for me in the only way she knows how! "Eh-eh-eh-EH!"  Also, I tend to the view that if she hasn't managed to fall back asleep within ten minutes or so, it's better to just go down and get her settled as opposed to me lying there awake listening to her gurn for who knows how long. Even if that means getting up out of my cosy pit three or more times. And while I am away, Little Guy commandeers my warm spot.

Ach. I am sure this too will...yawn...pass.