Brief Reprieve

The good news is that we have had a couple of better nights.  The bad news is that it is by no means a pattern.  Last night was pretty awful again.

To be honest I feel like a broken record.  I have the same thoughts and conversations about sleep day in, day out.  So to save my sanity, I am going to summarise the main points so far:

• Overtired babies are really hard work.  It is definitely NOT a good idea to keep a young baby awake in the hope they will sleep better at night.
• A good build up of feeding just before bedtime does seem to result in a better first stretch of sleep.  In fact the timing and length of the penultimate feed is just as important.  Yesterday my little man had a feed around 5pm which was fairly significant in length.  This meant that he just wasn't as hungry at 7pm.  It would have been better if either the penultimate feed had been at around 4pm or if the 5pm one had been shorter.
• I do disturb my babies sleep.  He wakes up every time we go to bed. I am not sure if this is because he hears us, senses our presence or smells my milk.  Therefore if I go to bed 2 hours after my baby has, he has a 2 hour first stretch; if I go 3 hours after, he gets a 3 hour stretch etc.
• A build up of wind definitely disturbs my man in the early hours.  He is still half asleep but flaps around like a baby seal.  Sleeping on my chest would work for him, but not for me.  Somehow, we need  to work on getting that wind out.  Part of me wonders if it is because he is having too many night time feeds and not burping properly.  The more feeds he has, the worse the build up of wind!
• At 4 months, baby sleep is by no means an exact science, especially when you throw breastfeeding into the mix!

My friend, who also breastfeeds her little boy, commented the other day that she thinks that there is too much undue pressure on parents to get their babies 'sleeping through the night' as early as possible.  The fact is, our little ones have so much to learn about, including sleep.  Some babies are naturally good sleepers, but others need a little extra help.  When you then include breastfeeding as a factor, it gets more complicated because night-time feeds are actually a good thing for keeping milk supply up.  

I saw our health visitor a couple of days ago and she was very reassuring.  She commented that our baby is still very young and not quite at the point of forming set habits.  As well as giving us a few pointers to try (encouraging self-soothing at nap-time, not feeding at every night-time get up etc.), she also said that sometimes you have to do whatever you do to get by.  So if rocking is the easiest way to get him to sleep, there is nothing wrong with doing that; we just might eventually create a sleep association with rocking which will be hard to break.

Another mummy friend was telling me that she is a fan of easy parenting.  She said she does whatever works in the moment, and when it stops working or becomes a problem, she will adapt.  

Although last night was quite trying, it was easier to deal with because the previous two nights had been quite good.  I don't feel we are in the middle of an unbreakable cycle anymore.  

I just ran

Another rubbish night.  

Thought I was on to a winner when he managed a 4hr 15 min stretch from 9:15pm - 1:30am but then it was downhill all the way.  My son has only had 10 hrs 15 mins sleep in the last 24 hours.  Babies his age should be getting about 14 hours and babies a bit older should be getting 12 hours.  He is, without a doubt, falling short.

So today has been a right off.  A nothing day with a bid to getting some naps without getting too many so that it doesn't affect his sleep tonight.

A battle.

So tonight I just ran.  I ran and it felt different.  I needed to feel something else other than internal conflict.  And I did.  I felt my lungs expanding, the blood pumping through my legs, the cold rush of air against my cheeks.  And when I stopped, I felt the sharp coolness of being out of breath, the stretch of fibres in my body, which had not been stretched for a long time.  It felt good.

I re-entered my house with rosy cheeks and a new mindset.

Night-time parenting

Unfortunately last night brought more of the same.  I was up from midnight until 3am and then again at 4:15am, 5:20am and 6:30am.  The long three hour stretch was mainly down to wind.  A good deal of baby massage and the trumps ensued!  Although I solved the wind problem, I then had a very wide awake baby to deal with.  Alas!

Last night I was better equipped psychologically to deal with being kept awake.  I actually didn't mind being on duty.  Part of this is down to reading the Dr Sears book, which changes the language around baby sleep substituting 'putting baby to sleep at night' with 'night-time parenting'.  It has realigned my thinking and helped me accept that my baby isn't an annoying barrier to my own sleep but my parental responsibility; helping him to sleep is part of the job.

Reflecting on the last couple of nights, some realisations have occurred.  One - the expressed bottle is probably the wind culprit but two - I need to do something about the wind!  I don't want to entirely give up on the bottle just yet as it might be my ticket to some freedom.  We already do a strict winding regime before bed with baby massage so I think I have covered the natural methods.  So now we are going to try infacol.  I know lots of people it has worked a treat for so am hoping for similar results.  I have only given him two doses today before breastfeeds but already he has burped much better than usual and more often.

A little victory to celebrate today has been getting him to nap without using the dummy.  For all three naps, he has gone off without it.  Also, for one of the naps, I managed to put him down while he was sleepy but not complete asleep.  When he stirred I tried patting him - one hand patting his side rhythmically and the other hand resting on his chest.  This prevented him from waking up completely and after two or three goes, he had fallen more soundly asleep and I was able to leave him in his cot.

I have tried to nap a bit today, which has definitely helped my sanity!  Tonight, he was falling asleep at 5:30pm.  I let him have a nap but only for half an hour.  This has meant putting back bed time a little but is probably preferable to having an overtired child to deal with.  Who knows what tonight will bring, but this I am sure of: it is my job to help him to sleep and it is my responsibility to find creative ways of catching up on my own sleep.

But I do need some sleep.

Last night was just awful.

My baby woke at midnight for a feed, which in itself wasn't such a bad thing.  But I fell asleep while feeding him and woke up an hour later with him half suckling at my breast in his sleep.  In moving him, he woke up and that began two hours of torture.  I just about got him back to sleep 20 minutes after he woke when my husband turned over in the bed and scratched his arm.  I tried to stop him, but it was too late.  It was enough noise to wake up the baby again.

I just lost it.  I told him it was his fault and that it wasn't fair.  Got out of bed and tried to settle him for another ten minutes or so.  But nothing was working.  So I shoved my husband and told him he had to sort it out.  This of course, was not going to work.  Husband tried his best but baby started to cry.  I yelled at husband, who went to the spare room in a bid to not be the source of any more noise.  I then yelled again that he had abandoned us.  The poor man couldn't win.

By this time, baby was being lulled back into semi-sleep.  But I was too impatient and tired.  I put him down too soon and he woke up.  During this time, my husband had been rubbing my back and telling me what a good mother was.  I just couldn't handle it any more.  I broke down into tears and sobbed that I just couldn't do it.  My husband gave me a gentle hug and told me to scoot over to the other side of the bed so he could take over.  He tried for over an hour to get baby to sleep.  Changed his nappy in case that was irritating him but nothing was working.  Although I couldn't actually get to sleep during all of this, it did give me time to calm down and regroup.  I needed that time.  I had been at my wits end.

Eventually I offered to try feeding baby again.  Although he took the feed, he was wide awake.  Then ensued another feeble attempt at comforting.  In the end, I moved over and lay my little boy next to me, wide awake whilst I dozed.  Eventually he fed again and went to sleep.

Unfortunately I kept baby in bed with me the rest of the night, in a bid to have as much sleep for me as possible.  I don't really want to get into this habit.  But I do need some sleep.

I blame the long afternoon nap yesterday.  I blame the four month sleep regression.  I blame this current developmental leap.  I blame myself.

Hard Knocks

This sleep business is by no means straightforward.  Quite frankly it takes one bad night to send everything to pot.  Yesterday and today we have not managed to stick to any sort of routine.  This is largely due to the fact that I have joined my baba for his morning nap and this has resulted in a longer nap, which combined with various daytime activities has thrown the rest of the day out.

Yesterday evening I dared to go and have my haircut.  This was great for my hair but the resulting night has left me rather hair-brained today.  After crying for his daddy and refusing a bottle, he spent the rest of the night waking every 1hr 45mins and even every hour towards the end of the night, wanting a feed.  He fed really well each time, so I know he needed it.  To be honest I shouldn't really be that surprised.  He is going through a 5 week developmental leap and is probably having a growth spurt at the same time.  Not to mention the ongoing after effects of immunisations last week.

This afternoon he has slept from 15:15 until 18:00.  Not all in one go.  He woke twice and fed but fell straight back asleep.  I let him.  The poor bairn really hasn't had enough sleep in the last 24hrs and hardly fed at all this morning so I figure he must have needed it.
Right now he is in the bath having a whale of a time.  His daddy will try him with the bottle again afterwards but I am resigned to giving him the breast if needs be.  After a hellish night, I am more interested in him getting a longer stretch of sleep.

Lesson of the day: expect less.

Star-fishing

I love it when my baby goes down and spreads his arms in his favourite sleep-time starfish position.  Apart from looking unbelievably cute, it is usually an indication of the fact he is going to stay asleep for a while.

Today has been quite neat in terms of routine and sleep:

7am wake up, nappy change (with daddy) and feed.
Time in the bouncer while I rushed round like a mad woman doing some cleaning.
9:15-9:55 Nap
9:55 Feed

We then went over to Woodville Sure Start Centre for a mums and babies group.  It is a particularly nice group and Mondays are fun because they have song-time, which helps me remember and learn new nursery rhymes.  On the way back he fell asleep in his car seat (no dummy) at about ten to midday.  By some miracle I managed to pick him out of his car seat and transfer him into a blanket and into cot.  He did wake and moan but the dummy helped him drift back off.

11:50 Nap
13:35 Feed

After this feed we had some lovely playtime at home with tummy time, songs and silly voices.  He enjoys this a lot so there was lots of smiling.  At 17 weeks he is starting to grab things more and so his play-mat has had a new lease of life and he concentrates really hard to co-ordinate his hand to grab hold of the toys dangling down.  This seems a lot more purposefully to the random hitting he used to do.  I was never sure if he was doing it meaningfully or by accident!  We had visitors this afternoon, which was nice.

14:15 Nap
15:00 Feed

During the next lot of activity time I had to keep things low key as he kept bringing up his milk.  He was interested in our visitors and had a small amount of time on his play-mat and in his bouncer.

I then had a bit of a dilemma.  Following the pattern today, I have put him down to sleep two hours after he last woke up and this seems to have worked well in terms of him going down well.  In theory the next nap-time was 17:00 but it worried me that having a sleep now will make his bedtime later and harder.  But if I didn't let him sleep I could end up with an overtired baby.  In the end, I decided to put him down for a nap but to limit it to twenty minutes.  That way, by rights he should be ready for a sleep again at around half 7.  This would be perfect!  Let's see what happens...

So far, the night-time regimen hasn't really changed anything.  For a start, he doesn't take the bottle very easily.  We have had to mix the bottle with the breast in order for him to remember to suck the bottle rather than chewing the teat.  Although it has been tricky, he did take more milk from the bottle on the second night compared with the first so I am confident we will continue to see improvements.  As for middle of the night feeds, I have been a bit remiss in keeping a note of times of feeds and have ended up feeding him 'just in case.'  I am resolved tonight to be more organised with it all and resolute about settling without feeding.  All the best intentions!

Express Yourself

I am not a fan of the crying.  Can't do it; won't do it.  End of story.

However, I am starting to get my head around the idea of a fixed (ish) routine for my little man.  I think that it will help both of us and probably short-circuit the crying.

Today, he has managed to have three naps of half an hour each time and then a twenty minute post-feed doze at 5pm.  I have to confess to rocking him to sleep with a dummy each time, but I did put him down in his cot rather than continuing to hold him.  I must keep reminding myself that being able to put him down at all is an improvement from a month ago.

I am going to start a two week experiment as of today.  We are going to stick to a routine during the daytime for naps and feeds.  We are also going to define our bed time routine and the number of feeds offered in the middle of the night.  I know by now that my baby is an efficient feeder and that there is nothing wrong with my milk supply so I am pretty confident that this shouldn't do him any harm.

For a start, I am going to express some milk so that the last feed before bedtime doesn't turn into comfort sucking for 40-50 minutes.  This will also mean that my husband or I (or a kindly babysitter) can give it to him.  Right now, my husband is giving our son his bath (in his tummy tub - much fun) and I am expressing milk (and typing one handed)! The plan will be to give this feed around 7pm.

Expressing in itself so no mean feat.  It is not always comfortable and it can take a while to yield enough milk for a feed.  I also find that it can result in nipple injuries, namely some nasty blood blisters.  This happens when I haven't centred my nipple properly in the breast pump funnel.  It will heal, but I am slightly concerned that if I am going to express everyday, that I will have permanent blood blisters.  Fingers crossed this doesn't happen.

The next thing I am going to add in to the night time routine is an eleven pm dream feed.  Our baby often wakes when we go to bed anyway, so let's see if we can make it a habit.  The idea behind this is that instead of doing his long stretch of sleep between 8:30pm and 1am, that he might do it between 11pm and 3:30am.  If I offer him a feed around then, it should last him until the morning, when we get up.  That sounds ever so easy doesn't it?

I am not naive, I know it won't happen as easily as that.  It is going to take patience and a lot of commitment before we are anyway near that stage.  My sixteen and a half week old baby has a few awkward habits to be replaced with new ones first.  It is also going to be a challenge for me as a person who usually rucks against schedules and routines.

For the daytime routine we will try something like this:

7am wake up and nappy change followed by feed.
Some activity time for example, tummy time or play mat while I eat breakfast and get dressed.
9am Nap time
9:30-9:45am Feed

Activity time (could include a mums and babies group)
11:00am Nap time (except Thursdays when I will stretch it until after buggy-fit if possible)
11:30/11:45am Feed

Activity time (could include nursery rhymes, stories, baby yoga on Tuesdays and swimming on Fridays)
2pm Nap time
2:30/2:45pm Feed

Activity time
5pm Cat nap
5:30pm Feed

6:00/6:15pm Bed-time routine - Bath, massage, story
7pm Expressed bottle feed.
Asleep by 7:30pm.

This routine should allow us to keep up with daily activities.  It also assumes that my baby's naps will be between 30 and 45 minutes.  I am hoping that eventually he will sleep for longer periods.

But let's be realistic, I am buckling myself in tight for this ride; it is going to be a bumpy one.

Roll with it

A little high yesterday - my baby rolled over from his front to his back for the first time!  It was such a proud moment.   There were a lot of effort grunts and moans involved but he did it.  Perhaps it was motivated by the fact he doesn't care for tummy time much?  I hope he can do it again today.

My little boy is having a little nap in his carseat at the moment before we head out to Baby Yoga.  I can thoroughly recommend Baby Yoga to new mums.  It is a really fun way of playing and exercising with your baby.  All the moves are associated with songs and have little ways of promoting baby's tone and development.  I think it is a really special bonding exercise too as we both get something out of it.

Before doing Baby Yoga, we did Baby Massage and that is now a firm part of a bedtime routine.  My little man loves it so much that he complains when it is time to stop and put his bed clothes on!  It really helps to work any excess wind out and certainly has the power to relax him.  We went to classes in Moira with a lovely lady called Keeley who runs a company called Blossom and Bloom.  She is a great instructor who is always takes the care to learn the babies' names and remembers the anecdotes that come up in class.

We had better go! Today the sun is shining and my heart is soaring with love.  The heights of motherhood!  Wish I could bottle this feeling.

Cry Baby

I never believed the lady who told me that a mum's body physically reacts to the sound of a baby crying.  That was the case until the day I felt my boobs harden and buzz seconds before my baby started to cry for a feed.  It was further compounded when my boobs went mental upon hearing my sister's baby crying.  They started hurting and filling up and didn't stop until the baby stopped crying.  It was the weirdest sensation ever.  Biology is very clever like that.

But what about when your body doesn't react?  Sometimes my little man cries and it is like a primal instinct comes over to want to comfort him and do what ever I can to make it stop.  At other times he starts to cry and I have to tell myself to get up and see to him.  Maybe I am more tired when the latter situation occurs?  Maybe it is the type of cry?  I don't know.

Yet when someone suggested to me today that I could leave my baby to cry themselves to sleep, I was secretly horrified.  I did admit that I didn't think I was ready to do that but inside I wondered when I would ever be ready to do that.  Crying is a baby's only form of communication for some time.  They are so dependent on adults for absolutely everything and can't help themselves.  I do wonder though if I should draw the line at sleeping.  That is something they should be able to help themselves with surely?  The research does nothing to help.  Some schools of thought advocate the 'cry it out' method, claiming that baby eventually learns to self soothe.  On the other side of the fence are claims that this is emotionally damaging to children and leads to all sorts of attachment problems.

Unfortunately I have worked with emotionally damaged kids.  Their behaviour is all over the place and they often are unable to explain their actions.  It is thought that this stems from deep seated emotional damage that reaches beyond their rational memories.  They are unable to remember the events that made them feel bad but they remember the bad feeling.  But this is an extreme and I am sure that me leaving my baby to whinge once in a while is not going to ruin him.  But that sneaking feeling is already creeping back in as I type this - what if it did?

I could drive myself mad and go round in ever-ending circles with this debate.  There really does not seem to be a simple answer.

At the moment, I think that my baby is only 16 weeks old and there is nothing wrong with me comforting him when he is upset or helping him get to sleep with a little cuddle.  I must remember that we have made progress from a month ago when I was unable to put him down for naps at all and had to hold him in my arms.  The amount of time he sleeps for is hugely variable but he is sleeping better in the daytime than he used to.  Small victories must be counted as blessings.

For now, my cry baby is going to have his mummy's comfort whenever he needs it.

Swimming is my saviour (temporary)

I sit here before you a new(ish) woman!

Finally, my boy has managed to settle better during the night and today's naps have been spectacular.  Now, I am not counting my chickens by any means.  We are talking about one improved night and one good day.  So what has been different?

I have taken the difficult decision to forget cuddling to sleep and try to encourage him to fall asleep by himself. It takes longer and requires the patient of a saint but the satisfaction of witnessing him drop off all on his own is more than worth it.  In the middle of the night, I did not proffer my breast each time he woke up.  If it had been three hours plus then I would give him some milk, but any less than that and he got the dummy, a stroke on the face and some comforting words along the lines of 'go to sleep now baby'.  He did make some noise and he did wake my husband up but within a few minutes he was fast asleep again and I was able to return to bed and sleep!  I probably managed around a total of six hours sleep last night.  Only 4 months ago, this would have been considered a poor night's sleep for me.  Now six hours, even if it is broken up by breastfeeding and settling, seems like a golden luxury! Oh how motherhood has changed my perspective!

I also should mention that I believe that my son is teething as he has been dribbling more than Wayne Rooney, chomping on his hand and his lower gum looks a little sore.  With this in mind, I administered a dose of Calpol and half a sachet of Ashton & Parsons Powders last night. I also gave him the other half the sachet this morning.  His drool has reduced significantly today.  Only one bib used as opposed to the five sodden ones of yesterday!

Today, swimming has been my nap time saviour.  He managed a quick 20 minute nap at 9:30 this morning and then fell asleep at half twelve while I was enjoying a coffee with my NCT friends in a local cafe.  Unfortunately, I had to wake him to get him changed for swimming but he woke in a good mood, which was a relief.  Back in the pushchair after swimming and he was asleep within fifteen minutes.  Disappointingly, he woke only half an hour later but I put my thinking cap on and realised he must be hungry.  After a 40 minute sleepy feed, he has returned to his nap and is still asleep.

This sleep time has made all the difference.  More time for me to rest and achieve something beyond changing a nappy.  I have baked a batch of muffins, washed up, sorted some washing, done some tidying and drank a hot cup of tea!

I wonder what it is about being in a swimming pool that tires us all out?  I remember going swimming as a child and being starving afterwards.  This afternoon, the only effort I have exerted is pulling my baby around the pool for half an hour but I now have that sleepy feeling.  It is amazing that my son has had so much sleep this afternoon, this almost never happens!  It is a fact alone which will see me returning to the pool every week!

The next dilemma is when to wake him.  I mean, it is half four now and I guess if I am to start bedtime in a couple of hours time, I really do need him to have had some awake time first.  I think I will give it another twenty minutes, and if he hasn't woken up by himself, I will shift him.

Oh! I spoke too soon - someone is stirring...

15 weeks plus two

It has been 15 weeks and two days since I laboured to get my son into the world.  I am a sleep deprived wreck, a feeling most new mums will be all too familiar with.  The problem is that I am not used to being this useless.

In my recent past, I was a successful education professional, used to juggling domestic life (just about) with marking, planning and senior leadership projects.  12 hour days, working in my own time to get the job done - those things were hard but perfectly doable.  When there was a problem, there were so many different ways of finding a solution and most of the time, it worked.  If I had a marking backlog, I would work extra hard in lunchtime or evenings until it had eased.  If there was a problem with getting a new initiative up and running at work, I would work with my colleagues to support them in its implementation.  If a child in my class was withdrawing or having some behavioural problems, I would work patiently with them and their parents to build their confidence and help them through any difficulties.  Sometimes I got too tired and felt a bit hopeless, wishing that term would end so I could recharge before starting all over again.

That life seemed hard, but this life is harder.

I realise this is all sounding rather negative so I better redress the balance with some positives.

My baby boy is a sociable, fun-loving baby who loves to play.  As a newborn, he was relatively easy.  Up until 8 weeks, he would feed himself into a milk coma and sleep plenty.  He enjoyed being on his playmat or in the bouncer chair.  It was easy for me to grab twenty minutes here and there to get simple household tasks done.  During the first month I had a horrible time with breastfeeding (that is an entirely different blogpost in its own right) but was determined to succeed.  With a lot of bloody-mindedness and support from my husband, family and myriad health professionals, we cracked it and after a month, it was still a challenge but working.  My baby boy smiled early and only cried when he was hungry.

At 8 weeks everything changed.  The day he had his first injections, I felt like I had betrayed him terribly.  I had let two nurses stab him simultaneously in either thigh with their vaccine filled syringes.  He had yelped and cried uncontrollably.  I fed him with my now practised breastfeeding skills and soothed him to sleep.  He was ok until that evening, he cried for two hours straight and didn't stop until I gave him some Calpol.  The next morning, he was like a different baby  He didn't want to be cuddled and wanted to be by himself.  He was irritable and cranky.  During that week, he wouldn't be held by strangers and barely tolerated being held by me unless he was really tired.  Sleeping became more of a problem.  He was overtired most of the time and refused to nap for more than 20-40 minutes at a time.

After a week or so, his better humour returned.  He enjoyed adult attention again and seemed to be getting back on track.  But the sleeping problem has remained.

His sleeping problem is now my sleeping problem.  I have not had more than six hours broken sleep across a night since he was born.  For five out of the last six nights, I have had between one and three hours broken sleep.  I am broken.

But the real problem is this.  Solving a baby's issues is not the same as solving work problems.  My son is well fed and - due to the fact, I get up and feed or cuddle him back to sleep when he stirs in the night - quite well rested.  But I am not.  I have survived on sugary snacks to keep my energy levels up because they are easy to grab and bring a temporary surge of energy.  I am not well rested.  I get up three-four times every night and only sleep in 1-2 hour stints.  I can't sleep in the day because my baby won't nap for long enough unless he is in the car or the sling.  The solutions for my son are to the detriment of my own health.

You may ask where my husband is in all of this.  He is brilliant.  He gets home every night from work and has cooked, washed up.  Or he has bathed our son and taken him while I can get some jobs done.  I refuse to involve him in the middle of the night unless it is really traumatic (for example a recent poo explosion all over a grobag).  After all, he has to function at work all day and I believe that he needs his sleep to do this.  He tells me off for not waking him.  He tells me it isn't fair and that I need to rely on him more.

I do.  He is right.

But I am used to being an independent problem solver and it is a completely foreign idea that I should be forced to rely on someone else to get something as simple as sleep.