Mama Needs Sleep

We have a little one bedroom apartment. We made a rough transition to my husband being the source of our income in early spring of 2013, so we couldn’t afford anything bigger even knowing that we were expecting a baby. At the time, we thought we were going to be renting my parents house from them by now, since they thought that they’d be moving onto the new property that they’re building on. Unfortunately, their building plans have had changes and delays, and we’re still in a little one bedroom with a seven month old.

We do have prospects for moving out; it’s mostly a question of when, and whether we’ll be making our first home purchase or renting again and waiting a year or two to purchase.

Until then, we’re a family of three in a one bedroom apartment.

At first, having our son in our bedroom was a blessing. Newborns need to eat regularly through the night, and safe co-sleeping — which can include simply sleeping a few feet away from the parents in a separate sleeping space — can be highly beneficial to breast feeding and to reducing the risk of SIDS, assuming parents aren’t smokers and such.

But my son is old enough that he doesn’t need to wake up multiple times through the night. He doesn’t need me the way he did as a newborn, or even as a three or four month old. He’s old enough, big enough, and on solid foods, which all means he can sleep through the night, or at least wake up significantly less often than he tends to.

The stretch between 4am and waking up in the morning, usually by 7am, is the worst. He always wakes up at least once, and it’s not uncommon for him to wake up 2-3 times in that short stretch. A seven month old does not require that. I know he doesn’t require it, because only about two of the times that he wakes me up through the whole night are for actual real, full feedings.

I know that hearing his every little complaint or difficulty getting comfortable doesn’t do my sleep any favors, even on the occasions that he doesn’t start crying and demanding me, and having us and the cats in the room didn’t help him either. Worrying about my husband needing to work first thing in the morning kept me from being able to ignore my son while he complained and resettled, too, because it would wake my husband up and make him potentially get even less sleep than me.

My husband and I finally did what we needed to do a couple of days ago. We rearranged our apartment.

This does mean that the bedroom is not longer our bedroom. It’s like we have a studio apartment for ourselves, and a bedroom for our son. My bookcases are now our headboard, and I can dive onto the bed from our dining area if I wanted to. And from our desk. And from our living room.

I really can’t wait for a house.

However, this is already significantly better as far as getting a good nights’ sleep. My son has actually been able to sleep in after we’ve been out late with family, which used to be a never. Last night, he only woke me up twice through the night, and when I thought we were about to be up at 7:30am, he ate and fell back to sleep for another hour-ish.

Its very possible that I’m simply sleeping through him waking up. He has to actually get kind of noisy instead of just complain in order to wake me up. I’m totally okay with that. It is very normal and healthy for him to learn to put himself back to sleep when he rouses, just like adults do. Adults don’t usually even remember resettling. If he’s truly distressed or in need of me, he’s going to get loud enough to wake me up. That kid is capable of some impressive yells when he wants to. But if he’s not truly in need of me, I’m okay with him complaining to himself for a few minutes and putting himself back to sleep. It will teach him to resettle the same way adults do, which is ultimately more restful for him, and in the meantime I get more sleep, which is more restful for me.

What about nursing, you ask? Well, I’m okay with him waking me up 1-2 times. He’s not going to go without. This is the plan, which worked out perfectly last night: nurse him shortly before or right at bedtime (8pm) so he goes to sleep well fed. Wake him up again when I go to sleep, which is usually around 10-10:30pm. Then he can have up to two feedings through the night, around 1am and around 4pm, give or take about half an hour. He then normally wakes up around 6:30-7am, and gets fed again not long after waking up. All this means that he gets to eat every 2-4 hours through the night still, without taxing me beyond what I feel I can continue to maintain long-term. He could probably be perfectly healthy and well fed with one less feeding at night, in fact, but I’ll let that happen after we’ve gotten used to this new schedule. We’ll give up night feedings over time, ending them altogether when he stops needing to breastfeed if they haven’t ended already. Waking up at least once through the night helps keep milk supply high enough to breastfeed to 1 year or longer, but 1-2 times isn’t so stressful on my body that I don’t get enough sleep to function well.

What about getting enough calories in him, you ask? Well, he is on solid foods for some meals now, and I’m increasing as needed. A few other moms have told me that getting foods with higher fat and protein content, like meat, make the most difference. That makes sense, since those are more useful to the body than carbohydrates and take longer to digest. Evening feedings are the priorities with solid foods right now, and I’ve been trying to get in at least one food with more fat and/or protein in it. Basically, he doesn’t get so few calories during the day that he can’t go longer at night, which will be important as we start dropping the night feedings.

I know a lot of people are about feeding on demand for as long as the baby/toddler wants. The problem I was having with this is that he came to expect to be allowed to latch every time he got upset and wanted comfort during the night, because my reaction to any crying or complaining was to nurse. The truth is, you don’t have to stick a boob in your nursing baby’s mouth every time they cry to be a good parent, or to feed them enough. It’s okay to truly take a careful look at their actual needs and your actual needs, and meet both. And its okay for both of you to need to sleep better at night. The transition to doing so may be a little rough, and like my son, they’ll probably need their own room to do it.

That’s okay.

Heck. I know my son and I have both slept better the last two nights than we have in a few months. That’s definitely okay.

Yes, I Sleep Train My Baby. No, I’m Not Abusive.

There is a lot of loaded discussion when it comes to sleep training. I’ve seen enough comments along the lines of, “People who let their children cry it out are cruel!” to know that there is a lot of emotion involved in this topic.

The one that always gets me is when they throw out some study or other that “proved” that crying it out is damaging to children because of something like impairment of brain development or something along those lines. I have to wonder how many people have actually seen the full study(ies), and if they could answer some of these questions for me:

• What kind of cry-it-out training was studied? For instance, was this a sort where a parent chose a naptime arbitrarily, rather than based on the child’s natural rhythms? Where a parent put them down and walked away without ever checking in, offering comfort, making sure they were fed recently enough before nap time, etc? Or was it a cry-it-out that was based on the child’s natural nap needs, where the parent didn’t just ignore their child, and where it was teaching them to be comfortable falling asleep in bed rather than in a parent’s arms or while nursing or rocking?
• Was the child well-fed? Did the cry-it-out training involve not meeting their nutrition needs, especially a younger infant’s nighttime needs? Or was it a sleep training that also met their natural eating rhythms, but made them routine and which evolved as the nutritional needs did by, for instance, doing less night feedings as the child needed less with age, weight, and adequate day feeding?
• Why would cry-it-out training be more damaging than, say, colic? Both involve crying, and colic can involve hours upon hours of crying at a time, which crying-it-out (especially when not done neglectfully) usually does not, particularly after the first couple of days on average.
• What control(s) were used? Who were involved in the comparison groups? What were the standards and the measurements? What confounding factors, such as age or weight at birth or health conditions, were controlled?

See, not so black and white.

Or the people who claim that sleep training makes a child lose trust in their caregivers and feel neglected or abandoned. Many of the same questions apply as above. What sort of sleep training are you talking about? What objective measures are you using?

I can certainly see how some forms of sleep training can be neglectful or abusive and therefore damaging, but I think that many parents who sleep train are anything but and their methods are anything but.

You see, my six month old son has learned to go to sleep almost every nap time without tears, and with no more than a minute or so of protest. I make sure he has his binkie, his “cuddle buddy” (one of those tiny blankets with a stuffed animal head in the middle), and a blanket. He cuddles up with the cuddle buddy and falls asleep happily most of the time. I don’t have to feed him to sleep. I don’t have to rock him as he fights me (him fighting me is what prompted me to begin sleep training). I don’t have to kill my back rocking him for half and hour or more when he gets sleepy and cranky. I wait until he’s clearly tired, usually about three hours after he last woke up, and I put him down with those comforting things, and he falls asleep.

How is that cruel? How is that neglectful?

It’s not that we never have a rougher nap time. He’s in transition from three naps to two right now, so he’s often still very tired in the evening, but not willing to sleep. I’ll often still put him down when he gets cranky, but if it’s clear he’s not going to fall asleep, he comes back out of the crib, usually within half an hour. I can’t force sleep on him, after all. I’m looking forward to when this transition is done, because a cranky baby who won’t sleep is no fun for anyone, including the baby.

And that’s natural.

We’ve also begun working on giving up the night feedings that he doesn’t need, being six months, about 14 pounds, and eating some solids. He still comfort feeds when he wakes up between sleep cycles, and since he’s capable of finding the comfort he needs right in his own crib with little or no fuss, we began working on doing so this week with one of his night feedings. Last night, it took only about fifteen minutes for him to fall asleep when he’d normally nurse. There was some protesting, but no screaming. No tears. I rocked him for a moment, and then set him down the same way I do at nap times. I am hopeful that in a few days, or at most a few weeks, he will have learned to put himself back to sleep quickly on his own. Then we’ll move on from there to another night feeding. My goal is to get from 4-5 to 1-2 night feedings very soon. Who knows? Maybe training him with one feeding will naturally carry over to the other feedings where he’s not actually hungry, and we’ll both sleep better at night in no time. Consistent night sleep is good for both of our brains, after all.

How is that cruel? How is that neglectful?

Honestly, children cry, and sometimes they do so in response to learning good things. Sometimes they fight things really hard, even if it’s something they ultimately will benefit from. There’s a difference between making them cry through cruelty and neglect, and making them cry because you’re teaching them something beneficial. There’s a difference between putting them down and ignoring them, regardless of their current needs, compared to teaching them a new habit and a routine.

The parent shouldn’t abdicate involved in the process of them learning this. They shouldn’t assume that the bed has become the parent the moment they are put down. My own son has this silly habit of rolling onto his stomach when he’s fighting falling asleep, and it will make him so mad that he’ll cry, spit out his binkie, and won’t roll back over. I check on him frequently enough that this never lasts more than a couple of minutes, because I’ll go in, roll him back over, replace his binkie, hand him his cuddle buddy, cover him back up, and give him a smile or a soft touch or spoken reassurance or a song before leaving again. Many times, this has been all he needed to calm down and fall asleep. Occasionally, I’ll pick him up, reassure him and cuddle him for a minute, and then put him back down. This has also often been all he needed to fall asleep. And because of this, he now often falls asleep easier in his own bed than if I try to rock him to sleep.

How is that cruel? How is that neglectful?

Routines are good for children, even very young ones. Finding comfort and familiarity with something good — their own bed at nap time — is a good thing. Children sleeping through the night is a good thing, as long as their needs aren’t being neglected (such as a younger infant’s need to eat at night still). And being able to do this while saving a parent’s body, mental health, and even giving them less sleep interruptions, is a good thing too.

Book Review: Baby Wise

 

I wish I had read this book sooner.

This book was recommended to me, but exactly what it contained and when it could be implemented wasn’t communicated to me until my son was five months old, at which point I went out and found it at Value Village and read it through the next day.

Since that was today, I obviously haven’t implemented it yet, but I have heard about other moms’ experiences with it and seen their children, and it’s very encouraging. I will likely report back on the effectiveness of the method at some point.

The point of Baby Wise is to help establish a routine and awareness of how a baby’s needs can me met best within a (flexible) routine, with the outcome of establishing sleep,  eat, and wake patterns that lead to sleeping through the night faster and to a better sleep schedule and a rested baby in general.

One of the keys to this is feeding upon the baby waking, rather than feeding the baby randomly or feeding the baby to sleep. This encourages the baby to feed when it has the most energy to get  a full, good feeding, to not use feeding as a sleep aid and therefore not learn to self soothe or fall asleep on his/her own, gives plenty of energy for fun, productive, happy wakeful times, and decreases reflux and gassy tummies.

One good thing about this method is that it goes to neither extreme. It doesn’t schedule feelings so strictly that the baby could be left hungry for long periods or hurt the mom’s milk supply, nor does it leave a mom a slave to a baby’s unpredictable schedule or every cry. It doesn’t leave a mom constantly holding a fussy, sleepy baby, nor does it leave a baby with absolutely no comfort or as a slave to a schedule that might not work for his or her developmental stage.m

It makes sense, but more importantly, I know a number of moms who loved this book. If only I had sooner understood why! I fully expect to be among those moms who have gotten good results from this method. And I am so, so looking forward to my little man sleeping through the night finally.