The return of sleep

My friends, night weaning is something that's been on my mind for a while. It all started when the bean was around 6 months old and I read that most 6 month olds slept through the night. I waited and waited for that to happen, but we were nowhere close. Since then, I've read several books and tried a slew of tricks to get the bean to sleep longer stretches at night, but we've only had minimal success.

I've known for a while that we would have to wean at night if I was going to start getting uninterrupted sleep and I was starting to feel like 18 months was a perfect age to be night weaned, but I wasn't sure how to go about doing it. To be honest, I didn't actually set out to night wean last month, but something strange happened to the bean's latch during the night that made nursing very painful. I guess it was the combination of all those teeth along with her being half asleep, but whatever the cause, it was enough for me to not want to nurse at all. I tried over the course of a couple nights allowing her to nurse for a few minutes at each wake up and then comforting her as best I could back to sleep, but it almost seemed to make matters worse. I finally decided we would nurse to sleep at bedtime and upon waking in the morning, but no more nursing during the night. The bean and I have had many conversations to this effect over the past few months, so it probably wasn't much of a shock to her.

It was definitely rough going there the first couple nights. The bean would wake up and ask to nurse, I would remind her that we don't nurse at night any more and she would completely lose it. The boy and I tried everything we could think of to comfort her and get her to fall back asleep, but there were definitely a lot of tears at first. We ended up losing even more sleep through this process, but the end was so worth it. The bean has slept through the night without waking exactly one time--she's usually still up once or twice during the night, but when she is asleep, she sleeps much more soundly than she did before and she falls back to sleep faster. The number of times she wakes is less and, the most amazing part is that she sleeps from the time we put her to bed (around 8pm) until around 2 or 3 am without waking once. This is incredible for her as before I would be running up to nurse her back to sleep once or twice between the time that she went to bed and when we did.

Our daytime nursing is still unrestricted and you can bet the bean is making up for those lost night sessions by nuring eleventy billion times during the day, but I'm so glad we were finally able to stop the night nursing. (And also a teeny tiny bit sad that our bean is getting to be such a big girl that she no longer needs it.)

On Sleep--Part Two

In my last post, I shared our sleep issues and now I'm back to tell you how we've (hopefully!) solved them.

First of all, I gave up on the idea of the bean sleeping every moment in her crib and decided to focus on naps. I told the bean I'd meet her halfway and continue to stay with her in the evenings after she fell asleep if I could just get her to nap on her own. I also let go of the idea that this would be a quick transition and set up a multi-step plan that we'd work at over the course of several weeks.

The first step was to get the bean used to sleeping without a body right next to her. Instead of cuddling with her through her nap, I started to roll away from the bean after she drifted off to sleep. I also stopped nursing her to sleep while lying down and instead would sit up and hold her until she fell asleep, since my ultimate goal was to be able to nurse her in a chair and then put her in her crib. This took a good two weeks to get to the point where the bean would fall asleep easily this way and nap soundly without cuddling up to me.

For step two, I brought the mattress out of the bean's crib and put it on the floor right next to our bed and had her sleep on that. This step was probably the most difficult for her to adjust to and there were a few days that I ended up laying on the mattress with her, but after another two weeks, she finally got it. (Yay!)

Next, I moved the mattress into her bedroom and put it on the floor next to the crib. We play music while the bean's sleeping, so I moved that into her room too. At this point, I started to put the bean on her mattress by leaning down as if I was reaching over the crib rail to try to get her used to that feeling.

After a week of that, I put the mattress up into the crib and fully expected a repeat of our previous experience (i.e. screaming as soon as her head hit the mattress), but I was shocked that it actually worked! Not every time, but I could usually get her down in the crib after a couple tries.

At first, the bean would only nap for about 20 minutes at a time, but I wasn't complaining. I was loving being able to get some things done, but after a while of that, 20 minutes turned into 30 minutes and 30 turned into 40 and then one day she napped for a full hour without waking up. She'll now nap for 1 1/2 to 2 hours at a time, which makes me so happy that I'm doing a little happy dance right now as I write this.

After the naps were established, I started putting the bean in her crib at the beginning of the night, and that started with 30 minutes stretches. We're now up to 1 hour at a time in the evening and I'm totally fine if that's how things stay. I'm able to get some things done in between her wakeups and at some point I give up and bring her to bed with me.

I never knew how many things I could accomplish in such a short period of time, but I usually map out my plan of attack before I put the bean down and then I run like crazy getting things done. It feels so good to be able to accomplish some things and I feel like a better mother when I can focus on her while she's awake and leave the chores for naptime. Here we go with the happy dance again!

So there you have it--how we got the bean to finally nap in her crib. Knocking on wood and crossing my toes that it stays that way!

On Sleep--Part One

We're big fans of Dr. Sears in our house and have several Sears parenting books. One piece of advice that is repeated in a few of the books is: if you resent it, change it. I've been resenting our sleeping situation for some time now, but felt powerless to change it which just added to my resentment.

Well, let me start from the beginning. For the first several months of her life, our bean slept in a bassinet beside our bed at night. During the day, she would only nap in our arms, but she was good for 2-4 hours at a time in the bassinet at night. After a couple months, she outgrew the bassinet and we transitioned her to her crib at the foot of our bed, which went fairly well and she even napped in her crib a few times, but at close to 4 months that all changed. There were a lot of things going on around that time--the weather got cooler and we stopped sleeping with a fan on, we weaned her from her swaddle, maybe she was entering the four month sleep regression, but whatever the cause, she flat out refused to sleep in her crib.

Now, you may remember that I posted a researched explanation of my thoughts on co-sleeping and had come to the conclusion that I wasn't sure we could do it safely and I wasn't really comfortable doing it full-time. I later said that I was too scared to bring the bean into our bed and had (almost) given up on co-sleeping until the day the bean decided she'd had enough of her crib. We had spent one night where the bean had been up every hour. She would wake up, we'd go to her room where I'd change her and nurse her back to sleep--a process that took a good 30-40 minutes. Then I'd very slowly and carefully lay her down in her crib, hoping she'd stay asleep and then spend 10-15 minutes trying to get myself back to sleep. Add that up and that gave me about 15 minutes of sleep before the next wakeup. I was a zombie the next day and the following night was the same deal--up every hour until one time I tried to put her down and she screamed the moment her head hit the mattress. Normally, I would have started the whole routine over again, but I was so desperate for sleep that I brought the bean into the bed and there she stayed the rest of the night. I tried to put her in her crib the next night, but it was the same deal--screaming at the top of her lungs when she touched the mattress and that was it. We were full-time co-sleepers ever after.

For the most part, we've loved it. The bean doesn't have to fully wake up when she's hungry, so she goes back to sleep faster and easier. I don't (usually) have to fully wake up to feed her, so I also go back to sleep faster and easier. The boy and I are both a little neurotic, so having the bean in bed is perfect. We just lay a hand on her chest when we want to check her, rather than having to squint across the room in the dark and wonder if she's really breathing or not.

In my original sleep post, I worried about safety. Here's what we've done--we removed two pillows from our bed so now there are only two thin pillows that we keep as close to the top of the bed as possible. We sleep with the fewest, thinnest blankets we can get away with and keep them folded down to waist level. We make sure our fitted sheet is tucked in nice and tight and we routinely check that our (firm) mattress is pushed all the way up to the headboard, with no gap. We also use bed rails--at first just one on my side of the bed, but then two once the bean started moving around more in her sleep. I laugh now when reading my sleep post because I said that its hard to get in and out of the bed with a rail up and you know what? It REALLY is, especially when you're carrying a sleeping baby that you don't want to wake up, but we make it work. For many months, we also had large feather beds on the floor on either side of the bed to soften the fall if the bean were to accidentally fall out of the bed, but we now feel more comfortable with our setup and don't worry about falls as much.

OK, now for the part that I have been resenting. We worry about falls and, for that reason, don't leave the bean alone in the bed. So that's 2-3 naps per day plus bedtime (which is at 7pm for the bean) that I have been trapped in our bed (or at least the bedroom) while the bean is sleeping and I am not. I have alternated between the optimistic (this is forcing me to take a break and rest!) and pessimistic (I have dishes and laundry and cooking to do!) viewpoints, but at the end of the day, it just wasn't working for me. I resented it. I wanted to change it.

We've tried several things, such as making a bed on the floor in our living room for the bean and something I call "crib bootcamp," which ended up being as painful as it sounds. (Crib bootcamp meant the bean wasn't allowed to sleep unless she was in her crib and, faced with those options, she chose to not sleep at all). Our results have ranged from minimal success to full out failure and, in case it isn't already obvious, cry-it-out isn't a strategy we're interested in trying.

I love the bean to death and I want to spend almost every moment with her, but I would have loved to have a few moments to shower or clean the house or even just sit on the couch and stare at the walls instead of lying next to the bean nursing every few minutes.

I'm going to share a solution with you in my next post. I hope I'm not tempting fate by calling this problem solved but, knock on wood, cross my fingers, and throw salt over my shoulder, its been working consistenly for over a month now so I'm hoping we're on the right track. Stay tuned.

How to Get a Baby to NOT Sleep

There have been several moments during the bean's short life where I've wished, for her sake, that we knew a little bit better what we were doing. I've never felt this as strongly as I do today.

Several weeks ago, shortly after transitioning her into her crib, the bean started waking up hourly during the night. We tried several things to extend her sleep, including angling her crib mattress in case she was having reflux that was waking her (propping up the head of the mattress is supposed to minimize reflux and also reduce the occurence of ear infections). Shortly after that, the bean began waking the moment we put her down in her crib--she would not sleep there for any length of time. At first it was just her nighttime sleep, but then she began refusing her crib for naps during the day as well. We began cosleeping fulltime at night and either cosleeping or holding her for naps during the day, because it was the only way any of us could get any rest.

There are definite advantages to cosleeping and we really love doing it, but the biggest disadvantage is that you must be in the bed when the baby is. At least, that's what it means for us, since we're too nervous to leave the bean alone for fear she'll wake up and roll her way onto the wood floor. This has left me stranded in the bed at 9pm on several occasions, waiting for the boy to come relieve me so I could brush my teeth and get ready for bed. The situation was getting frustrating for me because I could put the bean down on our bed without waking her, but the moment she was in her crib she was wide awake. I'm embarrassed to admit that this went on for weeks before it occured to me that the angled mattress may be causing the problem. We flattened out the mattress and guess who's sleeping in her crib for the longest nap she's had in weeks?

Seriously, we're fairly intelligent people, but there's a steep learning curve to this baby stuff!

THIS Is What I Thought It Would Be Like

I've had a post written for some time describing our experience at the hospital after having the bean, but I never published it because it seemed like just a bunch of complaining. Suffice it to say that we were very anxious to get away from the hospital and get home after our two day stay. I was under strict orders from our midwife to go home and do nothing but care for the bean for the next two weeks. The boy had taken that time off from work and we were looking forward to getting to know the newest member of our family. I had expected that the three of us would crawl into bed and stay in our pajamas. I'd feed the bean, the three of us would nap, the boy and I would take turns changing diapers and we'd squeeze in some gazing into each other's eyes here and there. The reality? Well, all I remember is the screaming. I fed the bean all. the. time. and when I wasn't feeding her, she was crying. I couldn't feed her lying down and I couldn't sit up in the bed thanks to my broken tailbone. I took the bean out of the bedroom to feed her and the boy ran around trying to take care of our animals, bring me food and water, and attempt to calm a screaming baby when I finally unlatched her to go to the bathroom or close my eyes for 10 minutes at 3am. It was not the peaceful time I had imagined it to be. The boy assures me (and there's photographic evidence to confirm) that the bean did, in fact, spend some time sleeping and interacting with us during that time. Looking at those pictures is like looking at my belly pictures the day before I delivered--I refuse to believe I was ever that big. And I refuse to believe that the bean ever stopped crying those first two weeks.

At my two week checkup, my midwife advised me that life with a new baby gets significantly easier after the first two weeks, after six weeks, and again after three months. Some of you even told me things would get easier at three months and its not that I didn't believe it, not exactly. I just didn't want to get my hopes up. Well, I'm here to say that you were right. I can't believe how far we've come from those first two weeks. We're napping consistently during the day and . . . dare I say it? We have something that looks almost like a schedule. NOW we can lay in bed and coo and giggle at each other, take a long nap and the bean will actually eat a meal and stop for some time before eating some more.

Shortly after the bean was born, I mourned that the days of the boy and I curling up on the couch on a Saturday afternoon to watch a movie were gone forever. Well, last Saturday the bean took a long nap and the boy and I did just that. It was heaven. I love, love, love spending time with the bean and "talking" to her and making her laugh, but those long days when she wouldn't close her eyes for more than a few minutes at a time were really, really tiring. We are all in such better spirits when she gets a little rest during the day.

I can't say whether this change is because the bean is older and decided to nap better or if its because we are getting better at taking care of her, but I suspect its a little of each. Every time we realize something new (oh look, when her eyes get glassy, that means she's tired!) I feel so badly for our little bean that she's had to suffer with such amateur parenting. We don't even need to mention how long after her birth it was before one of us said, "Do you think we should check if her diaper is dirty?" OK, I admit it, it was not me that said that. Were it up to me, the poor thing would have gone much longer without a clean diaper. I was a bit preoccupied with trying to figure out where the truck went that ran me over and oh yeah, working out everything that goes along with having another human being attached to my breast nonstop. But I digress. We're getting more comfortable with this whole parenting thing and she seems to be forgiving us our mistakes and adjusting right along with us.

I know its a cliche, but its truly amazing how quickly this time passes. When I look at the pictures from the bean's first few days and think about how different she is now, its amazing. I'm trying so hard to remember how quickly this time goes and to savor every moment. Before we know it, we'll be wondering where this first year went (and laughing at how inept we were)!

The Unexpected

We knew from the beginning that we could plan all we wanted, but there would be no way to predict how things would go with a new baby. Still, I've been surprised by the things that haven't gone according to plan.

Diapers. We just used the disposables provided at the hospital for those first couple days and switched to cloth once we got home. Then the bean got a horrible case of diaper rash that caused her so much pain that she was wailing inconsolably. The bean cried quite a bit those first couple weeks, but it was always for food and she was easily quieted at my breast. With the rash, she was in too much pain to eat and we were heartbroken that we could do little to comfort her. We tried several different things, but the only way we could find to get rid of the rash and keep it away was to switch to pampers. We tried some more earth-friendly (and less chemical-laden) brands, but they too brought on the rash. You can imagine that's difficult for this tree-hugging mama to swallow, but the bean's in charge. Now that her sensitive skin has started to toughen up a bit, we are very slowly starting to reintroduce the cloth by using one or two a day, but we may never be the full-time cloth diapering family I thought we'd be.

Sleeping. Before the bean was born, I posted about my concerns over our sleeping arrangements. I wasn't exactly sure where everyone would start out sleeping, but I had always thought that I would bring the bean into bed with us at some point during the night to nurse her and we would all sleep together for at least a couple hours. As it turns out, the logistics of that were really too difficult for me. Nursing in bed is not as easy as I thought it might be and I turned out to be way too paranoid to sleep with the bean in the bed. We did try out the snuggle nest for two nights before it was returned. You still have to pick up your baby to get him or her into the thing and the bean always woke up when I picked her up those first few weeks. I figured if I was going to risk waking her, I might as well put her in the bassinet. Yes, the ancient bassinet is where she ended up sleeping her first two months. The boy had the brilliant idea to remove all the lacy coverings, which allowed us a clear view into it from our bed so we could easily check in the night that she was still breathing (c'mon, I know all you parents have done it too). This setup has worked really well, but the bean is growing so quickly that she's within a couple inches of not being able to sleep in it with her legs straight out. She's been able to stretch and simultaneously bump all four sides with various body parts for a few weeks, so this past weekend we moved the crib into our bedroom. (We're still not ready to give up on being able to check her breathing in the middle of the night.) We now have a crib at the foot of our bed and we sleep with our heads at the foot so we can check her more easily. We have co-slept a handful of times and for sure the bean sleeps great in bed with us, but I am still paranoid about the whole thing and sleep better myself when she's in her own bed. Had we known, I guess we could have put the crib in our room from the beginning.

Baby Stuff. This was the biggest surprise. I was adamant that we not have big piles of plastic baby accoutrement around our house. That and my aversion to anything single-purpose led us to make very thoughtful, well researched purchases. We got a pack and play that came with an activity mat in tasteful, subdued colors. Travel, downstairs naps, and play--three uses! We chose a similarly subdued rocker. No bouncy seat, no swing; we thought we'd hold her or have her in a baby carrier most of the day anyway. Turns out the bean's aesthetic and mine are very different. She didn't much care for subdued and hated being in a carrier. (And not once has she been able to stay asleep when we put her in the pack and play.) Fortunately, we have some experienced friends and relatives that answered our calls for help when we couldn't manage to keep this baby entertained for more than 30 seconds at a time. We now have a living room full of brightly colored (some plastic) baby gear. She loves her hand-me-down activity mat and bouncy seat so much that I feel bad I almost deprived her of them. Lesson learned. We will continue to make thoughtful, earth-friendly purchases, but our living room decor will no longer factor into the decision.

On a different note, I was completely unprepared for how being a parent would change me. When the boy and I first got together, we spent every moment of our time getting to know one another. We stayed up all night having deep, intimate conversations and, after sleeping an hour or two, would pick up the next morning right where we left off. We would lock ourselves in the bedroom all weekend, emerging only to eat or walk the dog. We missed a lot of work in those days because nothing seemed as important as spending time together.

Being a mama to the bean is like that. Its mostly one-sided, but it has a similar intensity. I've spent every day and night with her for 2 1/2 months now--watching her learn new skills and discover new things, studying her in an attempt to predict when she'll be hungry, tired, or wanting to play. Its been such a short period of time, but its hard to remember what things were like before she arrived. I didn't think that I spent very much time thinking about myself before but, in comparison, it seems like that's all I did. Now, everything is for the bean. My needs are squished in around the edges. The poor boy is somehow piled in on top of that. In a way, I feel that its a juggling act, but in other ways its really not. The bean needs us to do absolutely everything for her, so she wins out each time. In such a short period of time, this little being has become my universe and its amazing to me how natural it feels.

The boy and the bean. My two favorite people.

Sleep Considerations

I've spent a good deal of time over the last couple months thinking about how we're all going to sleep after this bean arrives. I know it seems strange, since I've been told that new parents don't typically do a lot of sleeping, but still.

When I first got pregnant, there was no doubt in my mind that we'd cosleep. We planned to use a cosleeper, but the more I researched them, the more nervous I got. They aren't safety rated and there have been recalls on some models that posed strangulation hazards. OK, I thought, we'll put the baby in the bed with us. Where should she sleep? Between me and the edge of the bed and we run the risk of her rolling onto the (wood) floor. So I thought we'd get a bed rail which, aside from making it impossible to get in and out of the bed, are not recommended for use with infants. There is something like this which would stop the baby from rolling onto the floor, but isn't it also a suffocation hazard?

OK, how about putting the baby between the two of us? In that case, we run the risk of one of us rolling on top of her. (If you spend any time googling cosleeping, you'll hear so many horrific stories of parents rolling on top of and suffocating their babies, which is the biggest argument against cosleeping that I've found). I've read that this arrangement is not recommended because (apparently) the mother is very aware of the baby, but the father typically has no idea what (or who) he's sleeping on. I'm not sure how this applies to a two mom family, but I'm assuming the boy is the oblivious father in our case.

In all the research I've done, I've read over and over that cosleeping can be safe if the parents do it in a safe manner. However, when I try to find out what this "safe manner" is, all I can find is that you shouldn't smoke or do drugs (including alcohol) before you sleep with your baby and you should remove pillows and blankets from the bed. And how do we keep the little bean in the bed, preferably without an adult body on top of her? I have no clue.

For a while, we thought we'd leave the baby in the bassinet portion of a pack 'n play next to the bed, which seemed like a nice compromise. But then I got nervous because we spent so much time furnishing the bean's room with all wood furniture and we plan to buy an organic mattress with wool used as a fire retardant to minimize any toxic fumes she might be exposed to while sleeping. Then we're going to put her in a big plastic box to sleep for the first couple months? It didn't make sense to me.

Enter a further complication:


This bassinet has been in the boy's family for generations. It has, apparently, been passed around from household to household as each new baby has arrived. The boy's father slept in it, the boy and the boy's brothers slept in it and, most recently, a niece and nephew have both been in it, one of whom is currently under a year old. Its certainly not safety rated. I'm praying that its been repainted at least once since the days of lead paint. Oh yeah, its an odd size, so there were no organic mattresses to be had that would fit. Yet, there it is sitting in our house waiting for the arrival of the little bean. We're not even sure if she'll stay in it, at least at night, because I'm not sure we've completely given up on the idea of having her in the bed. (I'm still attached to the idea of sleeping, or at least lying down, while nursing in the middle of the night.) We're just not sure exactly how its going to work, which might be appropriate since we're not sure how any of this baby stuff is going to work--we're just going to have to wing it.