I don't have unrealistic expectations about my baby sleeping. I really don't. At four months I was at peace with our nighttime routine. At nine months, I don't want BabyE to night-wean completely. I know he will inevitably be hungry, teething, scared, or get a runny nose. Plus I do love our nighttime cuddles. I just don't think I can go on much longer getting less, much less, than two hours sleep at a time. I would be thrilled with two hours, or three. Do I dare hope?"They" say interrupted sleep is extremely unhealthy. I can attest to this. It is unhealthy to pick up the hot-out-of-the-oven roasting pan with bare hands. Unhealthy is finding that entire swaths of time in which you are awake and conversing have disappeared from memory. Especially when said periods of time were earlier that very same day. It's crying while nursing the baby who has woken up for the third time in two hours. It's dreading going to bed at all. It's living every day in a fog and not being the creative engaged mama you want to be.
What's an exhausted mama to do?
At this point basically everyone says, you've got to let that baby cry it out. It's great if that is what works for your family. That just was not something I was personally comfortable with. Though even I was asking myself, Is all this night waking the price you pay for co-sleeping and breastfeeding on request? You see, BabyE wasn't crying it out, but Mama was!Enter the No Cry Sleep Solution
I discussed all this with Baby's ND at his 9 month check up. She was once a co-sleeping mama herself, and had some great tips and sympathy for me. She let me borrow the The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night. It was written by a co-sleeping, breastfeeding mom of four who was desperate to get her youngest little to sleep. She did a lot of research and created a plan to systematically but gently help baby to sleep. I love the premise of this book because you can still co-sleep and nurse, and you are never asked to let baby cry. Not even for a second.It sounds absolutely perfect for our values and lifestyle, but does it work? The author writes that it may take 20-30 days to see results, but she does promise improvement. I've just started following her plan, so I'll post here and let you know how it goes. The first step is logging one day of your baby's existing sleep patterns. This helps you think about what the causes of sleep problems may be. It will also allow you see where improvements have been made and whether more or different strategies are needed after subsequent logs.
Our Sleep Log: Age 9 months
| "Should" | 5/1/2012 | |
|---|---|---|
| Number of Naps | 2 | 4 |
| Total Length of Naps | 2 1/2-4 hours | 2 3/4 hours |
| Bedtime (Asleep time) | 6:30-7 pm | 7:55 pm |
| Total Length Nighttime Sleep | 11-12 hours | 10 hours |
| Awake Time | 5:30-7 am | 6:06 am |
| Number of Awakenings | - | 6+ |
| Longest Sleep Span | - | 2 hours |
| Total Hours of Sleep | 14 | 12 3/4 hours |
This table is based on the original from page 177 The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night
. The "should" column is also based on the average sleep times provided in the book for a 9 month old.What I Learned about Baby's Sleep
One of our biggest problems was that BabyE's naps were extremely inconsistent. They drastically varied in time of day and length. While the book says good naps should be at least an hour long, his naps were almost always much shorter. This was reflected in him seeming over-tired by the end of everyday.
The problem at night was that he woke often. I was surprised that he woke even more than I had realized, sometimes as little as 1/4 hour after he had fallen asleep! I suspect that we were contributing to this pattern by waking him up when we came to bed. He's a very light sleeper so any movement or noise is very disruptive to him.
Overall, Baby was short on sleep by a couple of hours everyday.
Don't miss Part 2 of our baby sleeping experiment. Hopefully it will be much more coherent than Part 1!
This post is linked up with SortaCrunchy.
I'm so glad you have a doctor that supports your parenting approaches and gives you good advice in line with them! We were always just told that id we weren't willing to follow her advice to CIO then it was our own fault. My LO woke up every 20 minutes for the entire first 10 months, so I know what you are experiencing. We did look into that book and the take away of the importance of the nap helped us too. I didn't follow the program as it didn't seem like it would help in our situation which was different due to our son's sensory processing disorder. We didn't know he had SPD at that time, but we couldn't envision making the plan work with the behaviors we were seeing in our baby. I think I will look at it again now that you are reminding me of the book. He is now 26 months and still up 3 times a night on a good night. We still have plenty of bad nights of being up 8 - 12 times a night. Now that we are addressing the SPD with therapy I think maybe we could try again to address the sleep issues. Unless he has aged beyond the scope of the book. I'll have to check and see.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I wish you the best of luck and glorious sleep real soon!
It is so nice to know I'm not alone in this. Although, it sounds like you've had it tougher than I! If I remember correctly, the NCSS book applies to kids up to 5 years old. I hope you find something that works for you soon!!
DeleteI hear you. I never had a problem with the night feeds until I got pregnant again when my son was 14 months. I did try NCSS for 3 weeks with no improvement and I ended up needing something a bit quicker but still gentle. There were a couple of things that we were already doing that helped a lot. First, we had sort of a modified cosleeping arrangement. DS was on a queen mattress on the floor in his own (very babyproofed room). That way, when he woke we could go in and sleep with him, but if he didn't, we could take advantage of longer stretches in our own bed. (And we weren't waking him up with our own movements.)
ReplyDeleteThe other thing is I did put my husband on shift for part of the night without totally night weaning. I chose 4 hours because DS would routinely go that long without asking to nurse during the day. So after he went to bed, any wakings within 4 hours were Dad's territory. He didn't get fed, obviously, but he got all the cuddles and comfort he needed and I got a bit of time in bed by myself.
I hope you can sort things out and get some rest!