It happened. I am still in shock.

It took 50 weeks or 350 nights but it has finally happened.

My little boy actually slept through the night!  7:45pm - 4:50am.  NINE HOURS.

In fact, he has done it twice.  He did the same last night too.

So what is different?  I mentioned that I decided to stop feeding him in the night.  I think this has definitely been a factor.  But the first two nights of not feeding were sleepless.  He woke frequently (every hour) or he woke for long periods - 1.5 hours of crying in our arms.  It sounds cruel.  But he wasn't trying to feed. He wanted to be asleep and was struggling to settle.  We gave him water so he wasn't thirsty and we gave him lots of comfort.

On the third night he woke once, around 3am and had a drink of water.  But I was struggling to settle him and I realised that he couldn't get comfortable in my arms.  He is a lot bigger now and I don't think my frame can adequately support him for a comfortable sleeping position.

The next night, I suggested that he needed to re-learn how to go to sleep in his cot.  No rocking.  So at nap-time that day, I insisted that he lie down in his cot and I rubbed his back to get him to sleep.  It took lots and lots of lying him back down and him moaning and complaining, but eventually he got the idea.  When it came to bedtime, he was happy to lie down and have his back rubbed to go to sleep.  I could hardly believe it!  He had one wake up around 3am again, I gave him a drink and lay him back down to sleep without an issue.

For the last two nights, he has slept through until nearly 5am.  He has then either been settled back to sleep or I have given him his morning feed.

The other major difference in approach has been for me to give him supper at 6:15pm.  He has had a weetabix and oatmilk and then his evening feed at 7pm.

I wonder how long it will continue for? Is this it now? Will he continue this pattern?  Or are we experiencing something fleeting?

I really hope that this will generally be the norm now.  I am exhausted and it is going to take a long time for me to recover from this tiredness.  But I will do anything for my little boy and if he goes back to needing me in the middle of the night, I will be there for him.

I am very glad that we didn't go down the controlled crying approach.  But I do think that what we have done constitutes some form of sleep training.  My little boy needed to be shown that he can fall asleep in his cot.  Eventually, we will gradually withdraw, so that he can go to sleep without us in his room.

I am so proud of him.  And I am so proud of us.  We have given our boy what he needed, and in return, we have got what we need - SLEEP!!

Mother's Sleep Deprivation

My little boy is going to be one this month! I can hardly believe it.

What's more, I can hardly believe that I have not had an uninterrupted night's sleep for nearly a whole year.  Sleep deprivation is a special kind of torture.

"Forcibly depriving a person of sleep is a profound assault on the entire biological system at the foundation of that person’s mind and body." Psychology Today, Dec. 2014

The sleep deprivation being referred to here is extreme, where a subject is forced to stay awake for long periods of time (180 hours being quoted at one point).  It is hard to know where my sleep deprivation fits in because I do get small amounts of sleep every night, broken up into 1-3 hour chunks.  

When I read the effects of sleep deprivation, I recognise some of the symptoms  - "unpleasant feelings of fatigue, irritability and difficulties concentrating...poor judgment...considerable increase in appetite...apathy... lethargy and social withdrawal." Psychology Today, Dec. 2014.  I am sure that these things can be experienced in varying degrees and certainly with more severity for the poor person who is forced to stay awake for 180 hours in a row.  Yet that shouldn't negate the fact that mothers, who experience continual sleep interruptions and lack of sleep over a long period of time, are bound to suffer too.

Since I have gone back to work, I have found it more and more difficult to cope without sleep.  In particular, I think this is down to the mental demands of my job as a senior leader-cum-teacher in school.  If I am totally honest, I have found recalling even my timetables a challenge at times - something I am used to doing at speed.

I feel like something has to give.  I need to be fit to look after my baby.  I need my husband to be able to share the load.

So I decided two nights ago, not to feed my baby overnight anymore.  No controlled crying still or anything like that.  But offers of other comfort and water, if he is thirsty.  A weight has been lifted off my shoulders.  The process, however, is by no means easy...

Miss you Mummy

I know that my baby misses me in the night.  When he wakes up and feels confused that he is sitting upright, he wants me to make it better.  I know that he needs me.  I get that.  I just wish that he could stay asleep for extended periods of time and need me less often.  

I know he misses me in the night and I miss him too.  While his daddy is working away, it is so tempting to just pull him into bed with me all night.  We might both get more sleep this way (or not... I am not deluded).  But it wouldn't be fair to set up this pattern to then insist he goes back in his cot upon his daddy's return.  So I must persist with settling him.  SEVEN times last night.  It felt relentless.  

A well meaning friend has suggested that controlled crying isn't as bad as I might think and that after a couple of nights, her baby is now sleeping through most of the time.  My problem is that I know that we could get through the crying, but I worry about the effects of any period of crying (without comfort) on my baby.  Until I can explain to him what I am doing in a way he understands, I just don't feel comfortable about it. 

Needing or even wanting warmth and comfort in the dark hours is normal.  Why else do we pair up as a species and sleep next to each other in double beds?  I want my baby to know love and care.  24 hours a day.  And I suppose that comes with a price.  My sleep.  

I just hope I am up to the job.

Tough love - tough for who?

Last night was hard.  I mean really hard.

My husband was away working and so there were no other options but for me to get bedtime sorted.
We did our usual bedtimes rituals and my son fell asleep feeding - I thought I was onto a winner.  But how deluded could I be?  My son woke up as soon as his head hit the cot.  The screaming started but I managed to put that to a stop by picking him up and showing him the Peter Rabbit and Friends pictures on the walls.  He loves an animal impression and saying goodnight to all the animals is part of our ritual when he goes to sleep in his cot.

I put him back down in his cot and his little face screwed up, mouth open wide and the crying started again.   This time Lupo the puppy and Elli the elephant came into play.  My son was calm again.  But then cot gymnastics ramped up - flips, turns, rocking, pulling up to knees, gnawing the cot bars.  I decided to let him get it out of his system for a few minutes.  Unfortunately he had other ideas.  I tried picking him up.  He just arched his back and yelled.  So I put him down again.  More cot gymnastics.  Every time I tried to turn him back round to lying down he yelled. I decided to try and nurse him again to calm him down.  But it was hurting me.  He was clamping too much and I was too sore.

Back in the cot, and a little calmer.  He started biting his fingers.  Then mine.  I hadn't given him any pain relief for his teeth (tooth number 8 is currently erupting) so I dutifully toddled off to administer teething powders and Calpol.

This time, when I went back in the nursery I put Eva Cassidy on the stereo and held him upright, gently swaying to the music.  He would settle his head temporarily on my chest but then after a few seconds start squirming.  And repeat.  Then he noticed the animals on the wall again and was trying to reach for them.

My back couldn't take it, so I put him in the cot.  The beginnings of a screaming fit but I swooped in with the taggy to distract him from that enterprise.  It worked!  He started to play with it gently.  Then he turned on his side!  Hooray! I had cracked it.

Nope.

Don't be silly.

Life is never that simple.

He turned over and spotted me.  And burst into tears.  I tried to settle him in his cot.  He wasn't having any of it.

By this time it was 10pm - over 2.5 hours since I had first tried to put him in his cot.  I decided that nursing was the only option left.

Finally he went to sleep.

For one hour.

Then I settled him just by holding him  -this isn't too bad, I thought.

Then he woke again 40 minutes later.  I was so tired myself that I brought him into bed to feed.

That was my night from then on - constant nursing.  Every time I tried to release him, he yelled and I was too tired for other tactics.

In the early hours, he sneezed and bit me.  Before I could remove him, he sneezed again, clamping down a second time.  It took every ounce of will power not to scream and swear myself.

I sighed and pulled him over to the other side.

My back is killing me today.  All this rubbish rocking that doesn't work.  The bending over the cot.  The sleeping in a twisted position.

My husband is back tonight.  I really hope that this means things will be better.

Who am I kidding?

The Sickness

A recent vomiting bug in our household has caused me much grief - piles and piles of washing, constant mopping up of sick and number twos and a baby who wants to nurse constantly.  Well... during the day that is!

Actually, the advent of this bug has also resulted in some of the best night's sleep I have had in ages.  I guess my little one needs the sleep as he is fighting off this bug.  Now, don't get me wrong, we are far from 'sleeping through the night' territory but I am being woken up twice per night rather than four to fives times.  My baby has slept for four and a half hours in a row! It is like a miracle has happened.

Perhaps it is that I have been ill and less available during the night?  Perhaps it is because I have had to stop him nursing too much as he can't handle the quantity and so we the collateral benefit is that I am night weaning him without even realising it?

I am not counting my chickens.  I know that as he gets better, there is every chance that he will resume his old habits.  But for now, I may live in hope!

Hope for the Hopeless

While I was at breastfeeding support group today, one of the other mums was asking about how sleep was going in our household.  Her son is 5 and a half months now and I think she was looking for a chink of light on the horizon.  It pained me to report back to her that at 8 months, my son's sleep is as bad as ever, if not worse.

We have had two unsettled weeks of being away, teething, learning to crawl, tummy aches from milk intolerance and probably a raft of other reasons that I am not even aware exist... oh yeah, and apparently there is an eight month sleep regression.  What the ..? I am speechless.

Why does sleep have to be such a hard skill to master.  As a fully grown up person, I have no recollection of the struggle to sleep in my formative years.  As far as I was concerned, I was born being able to sleep for several hours in a row.  I am terribly mistaken of course!

It is incredibly difficult to even contemplate going back to any sort of sleep training until my little man has finished this current stage of teething.  But then there are all the other developmental milestones - am I expecting too much?

But the panic does rise occasionally as I realise that I am starting back to work in a month's time... oh my goodness!

Three time's a charm!

Most people wouldn't consider this a good night, but for us, last night was good... only the THREE get ups!

Three easy get ups, with no more than a feed before he was back in the cot sound asleep.  I would be really happy if this 11pm, 2am, 4:00am pattern sticks because then we can work at stretching the gaps of sleep a bit more...

Watch this space!

What the...? Another Flipping' Regression!!

Latest googling has revealed the delights of the 8-10 month sleep regression.  Hang on a minute!  Haven't we already done the sleep regression thing?  Surely it can't get any worse?

Why I think I am ever safe when it comes to sleep and babies, I will never know!  After a month of consecutive colds and teething, I'll admit we have gone a bit soft.  I have fed our little one to sleep quite often and my husband has veered back into rocking territory.  So not only have we sabotaged ourselves somewhat, we now have this second wave of sleep regression on the horizon.  Not only that, but our baby's napping schedule has started to change again and all the neat timings he had settled into have gone haywire again.

I can't imagine what another sleep regression could mean for us.  Our son still wakes 3-5 times per night - I don't think I could take any more wakings!  What does seem to be happening is that falling asleep in the first place is becoming more difficult again.  Sh-ing and patting etc are too stimulating for him.  His favourite go-to-sleep songs, Moonshadow and Three Little Birds have lost their charm.  I have had a rough few days of lots of crying and have been losing my confidence when it comes to bedtimes.

Fortunately last night a little chink of light emerged.  With the gods on my side, I managed to settle my little man to sleep in his cot with nothing more than a calming story and counting 'go-to-sleep 1, go-to-sleep 2' etc.  He zoned into the counting and fell asleep beautifully.  Unfortunately it only lasted through one sleep cycle - 40 minutes - but the same routine of counting soon settled him back down for another couple of hours.

This has given me hope but it hasn't solved anything.  Sleep is an ongoing agenda in our household.  It is very difficult to maintain any sort of pattern because he changes things up so frequently.

The principles I will continue to live by, however, are that he needs to have as many opportunities as possible to fall asleep whilst lying in his cot and that for the moment, until solids are better established, he needs those breastfeeds.  I weighed him today and he is still on track with his weight gain, which is a relief.

So if there is another sleep regression, we will just ride it out.  Like we've ridden out everything that has gone before.  I don't believe that there is a one-size fits all solution to sleep or anything baby related!

Party Tricks

About ten days ago, the little man accidentally rolled from his back to his front while we were at a mothers and babies group.  Unlike the tummy to back roll, which he only bothered with a few times, this roll has become his favourite thing to do as soon as he lies on his back.  This made bedtime rather like an evening at the circus last night - he'd be placed on his back and then before I knew it, he'd have grabbed the cot rails and turned himself over onto his tummy.  He thought this was very funny.  At 9pm, having not yet had my dinner, I did not! (Well, secretly I did actually, but I have to maintain some form of parental seriousness in all this).

Eventually, at 9:30pm, when it was obvious he wasn't about to fall asleep by himself any time soon but got very upset when I left the room, I decided to offer him another breastfeed.  And boy did he go for it!! Not only did he obviously need the feed, but he soon fell asleep and was easily laid peacefully in his cot.

But it was not a straightforward night, feeds at midnight, something past 3, another wake up at 5 and then having not gone back to sleep, a nappy change and another feed.  So now we are in the position where it is 10:40am, his last feed was 6am and his last sleep ended at 7:50am - the neat schedule times have gone!! I am waiting for some cues...

But do you know what?  My boy has been giggling away and playing happily this morning - he keeps looking at me, head cocked to one side and giving me a smile to melt the coldest of hearts.  He is a happy boy! And that, that is all I could ever ask for! Love him!

NEVER ASSUME...

...it makes an ASS out of U and ME!  I had assumed we had mastered pick up/put down, but it seems not so...

Pick up/put down is not a forgotten agenda but it hasn't been easy over the past week.  My son has been suffering with a head cold, which has resulted in a very hoarse and croaky throat.  This has made the crying associated with bed-times much harder to bear for all parties.  I worry that the crying is what has exacerbated the throat issue in the first place and then I feel guilty.  On top of this, he is still in the full throws of teething, which is a miserable time for any baby.

So last night I just fed him every time he woke up.  At least I could relax in the easy chair and doze.  But at 5:45am my little man was not in the mood for going back to sleep.  Nothing was working and in the end I brought him into bed with me.  Even that didn't work.  Eventually, just after 8am he took another feed and drifted off next to me.  We awoke when my alarm sounded at 9am, to get us up in time for Tiny Talk.  I needed that sleep badly.  But I can't help but think that my kindness is misguided and that it just would have been better to find a way to insist that he stay in bed til 7am, when we usually start our day.

Intertwined with all of this is another issue, the fact that my husband wants to help but because of separation anxiety from me, our son just cries harder - almost a tantrum - and I worry about his throat.  I know that I cannot do this by myself.  I just feel so torn.

I used to pride myself on having a son who could easily go 24 hours without crying, largely due to our responsiveness in meeting his needs immediately.  I feel like I have now created a baby, who cries before nearly every sleep.  Who has cried himself into having a sore throat.

I know we are always with him and he is never abandoned during this crying but I am finding it difficult.  When he shouts and does his 'mantra' cry before sleep, that is slightly different and I can cope with that but his teething and sore throat makes it hard to tell the difference between that type of cry and a raw 'I need help' cry.

Breastfeeding advisors tell us that if our babies are drinking at night, then they still need these feeds and we should continue.  It is only if they are messing around, which signals the beginnings of night weaning.  My baby drinks, in fact, gulps his milk down in the night.  He is definitely hungry.  So how can I deny him his nourishment?

As you can probably tell, I am a confused mess over all of this.  And now I have to go and have a conversation with my boss about my return to work.  Another round of guilt ensues...

I promise to return with a more positive outlook next time.  For myself, if nothing else.

Pick up Put Down - A Revelation

So a new year, a new us.  A marginally better sleeping baby and a feeling that the only way is up!

After going insane with different combinations of rocking/singing/feeding, I decided that enough was enough and some action needed to be taken.  My husband had the best part of two weeks off over Christmas and I asked him if he would join me in trying the pick up put down (pupd) method properly while he was off.  I knew it was going to be hard which is why it was important for him to be onboard and not at work.  He was more than happy to give it a go.

A really good summary of the method including age adaptations can be found here:
http://www.babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=208990.0

The first two nights we did it, we set a time limit - 40 minutes.  If it hadn't worked after that, I would try feeding him again.  My husband did all the pick ups and our son cried for 40 minutes constantly, save for the temporary moments he was in my husband's arms.  It was heartbreaking and we gave up after our allotted time, I fed him and he went to sleep.  He did sleep for longer than previously though, which was an improvement.  Another major improvement is that he is no longer getting into bed with us!

Then Christmas came and it all went a bit to pot.  I got away with feeding him to sleep a couple of nights and well, basically got lazy.  But in the middle of the night, on Christmas Eve-eve I had tried everything and he still wasn't sleeping.  It was 1am.  I decided that pupd was my only option. Two and a quarter hours later he was asleep! It was hard work.  But the relief I felt watching him fall asleep in his own cot was worth it.

From then on, I included pupd in my repertoire of sleeping making.

A couple of days later, I bought 'The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems: By Teaching You How to Ask the Right Questions' by Tracey Hogg and Melissa Blau.  I quickly realised that we weren't being consistent and to do this properly, we needed to do pupd for all sleeps including naps.

To start with, we concentrated on bedtimes.  My husband and I acted as a tag-team.  We agreed which person would start, decided on a maximum amount of time that person would try for (45mins) and went for it! The first night it took an hour and a half.  The second night it took 50 minutes.  We came home from being away and I was amazed that I could put my boy down in his cot after his feed and watched him settle himself to sleep.  I thought we had cracked it!

Yet life is never that simple.  A regression was warned about and it came.  He settled but then kept waking up.  It started to take longer and the crying worsened.  But we stuck to our guns.

It has been a week now, we have moved his cot into his own room and he is taking anywhere between 20-45 minutes to settle.  I have realised that he needs wind down time in his cot.  We listen to music, read a story and I stay with him whilst he tosses and turns.  When my husband does it, there is more resistance but it is improving with each time.
We take it turns, or have two nights on, two nights off as the Baby Whisperer suggests.  This means that we share the load and our son gets used to the fact that mummy or daddy might put him to bed.

I am also using it to settle him in the middle of the night instead of feeding him all the time.  Currently he feeds at 7pm, falls asleep 8-8:30pm and then wakes 10:30-11pm and I feed him again.  He has woken around midnight a few times and I have used pupd to resettle him in about 10-15 minutes.  2am-3am he wakes again and I feed him.  4:30-5am he wakes again and I feed him.  He then wakes up properly between 6-7am.  So he is having three middle of the night feeds. I want to slowly reduce it, but need advice on where to start. It might be easier to cut the 2-3am feed first as he will still be sleepy enough to want to go back off.  We will see.

A couple of days ago, we also started using pupd for naps.  I got very demoralised after an hour of trying and crying that he wouldn't fall asleep. My husband took pity and took over and he was asleep within 10 minutes.  Since then, I have persevered and although it takes time, it is working.

This morning, it took twenty minutes of winding down and comforting (a couple of pick ups included) for him to fall asleep.  He managed one sleep cycle, which isn't enough so I put on a brave face and went back in to do pupd to extend his nap time.  Another twenty minutes later he had fallen asleep again.  So far, he has slept for another hour.   I can hear little sighs over the monitor now though so he is either transitioning into another sleep cycle, or he is about to wake up.
 (- He must have been transitioning, because he is still asleep 20 minutes later!)

I have to admit that I really wanted a method that involved no crying at all.  Unfortunately, it has been unavoidable because he has to express the fact that he is frustrated about falling to sleep.  Our job has been to be there for him, supporting him through the frustrations.  However, it has been hard to witness our son crying.  He rarely cries and we are not used to it.  But we have learnt the difference between him shouting and crying.  I have also learnt how to comfort him without picking him up or with minimal picking up. The great thing about pupd is that you never have to leave your baby by themselves.  You are there with them, encouraging them to relax and sleep.  Your baby never has to feel abandoned.  

The key thing I have learned in all of this is about not overstimulating my baby.  I understand better that my little 'duracell bunny' can't really keep going; he just needs a wind down.  I will continue to use pupd and hope that eventually his ability to self settle improves and his daytime naps are consolidated.

This will be good for my son but I must admit, it will be good for me too.  I don't want to start back at work in a messy state of sleep deprivation.  And before I do go back, I want to spend my awake time enjoying my son and not wishing he was asleep!

2016 is the year of sleep!