Our Sleep Story

Oh sleep, truly the most elusive thing when you have a baby. When these cute little creatures first enter our lives they have night time parties and crash all day long. Thanks a lot nature, I just had a 32 hour labour, major surgery, a child who doesn't feed properly and now you design them to have nights and days mixed up. WTF did I ever do to you!?

Thankfully, by some miracle these tiny humans sort out their shit and start sleeping more at night and having daytime parties. I had a friend recommend early on "The Baby Whisperer" sleep book. I had every intention of following this method of early sleep training but when our feeding problems persisted it was next to impossible and I quickly abandoned structured feeding for on demand feedings. Then Boo Bear (aka tiny human, aka Ella Bean, aka Wiggles) was diagnosed with acid reflux and we had a very fussy baby on our hands.

Now, 3 months into this adventure this Momma wants her evenings and nights back.

Here's how it was BEFORE we started sleep training. Ella would wake up around 6am (give or take). Sometimes she would eat a little then sleep some more, sometimes not. Then around 9am she would get fussy and I would feed her another bottle until she fell asleep. She would nap for a short time (45 -1hr if I was lucky). Then she would wake up crying, eat some more, spend some time being happy and then be fussy and feed to sleep again. This cycle goes all day until late afternoon when the fussiness really ramped up. To the point where she couldn't even calm down enough to eat. We had a seriously over tired baby on our hands. She usually wouldn't be down for the night until 10pm ish. Not exactly convenient for us. She needed to be tended to on a regular basis, especially at night time. And yet again, she needed to be fed to fall asleep.

Now I didn't actually mind the eating to fall asleep thing because it was easy. She was quiet and content, but we were clearly fostering a habit. Not to mention the middle of the night bullshit that was still going on. As Dr. Ferber states in his book "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" a 3 month old baby no longer has a nutritional need for a middle of the night feeding. They can go 10 hours without eating at night and be just fine. Well Miss Ella had created a habit of waking between 1:30 and 2:30 (depending when she fell asleep) and wanted to eat to fall back asleep (starting to sense the issue?). Now, it's only 1 time at night but when you go to sleep at 11pm then wake up a couple hours later, feed her, put her down, and go back to sleep only to wake up another few hours later, it gets tiring.

How does one fix this problem....

There are a lot of different methods out there and everyone has an opinion on them. I bought 4 sleep books used from a swap group and had read an article that sort of cleared up the Cry It Out (CIO) method. Initially, I didn't think I would be able to listen to Ella cry without being there to comfort her, but in the past few weeks her cries have become less jarring. I decided (and Steve supported) to use Dr. Ferber's method. The CIO method.

Now before you go all "how can you let her cry" or "poor baby, she must feel abandoned" or "your going to cause brain damage" blah blah blah... Let me explain the true process, it's really not so bad.

It's naptime (or bedtime) and you put baby down awake (but ready for sleep). I give her a rub on the tummy and a kiss on the forehead and leave the room. Because this isn't her usual way to go to sleep she is naturally not impressed with me. She cries. After 5 minutes I go back in, rub her tummy, tell her everything is ok and that I'm just outside her room. I leave the room again, even if she is still crying. This time I wait 10 minutes. If she is still crying I repeat the process. Enter, rub tummy, tell her its ok, leave. Now, I wait 15 minutes.  Repeat this every 15 minutes until she falls asleep. If it's naptime, only leave her for an hour and then abandon the process and try again for her next nap.

Soooo I bet your wondering how this has all worked out for me... Well that first night sucked big time! She was right pissed off with us. She fell asleep eating at 8pm (I hadn't decided to start that night until after putting her down and her waking up instantly, again, like she always does). That's when it began. She took an hour or so to finally go down. Slept til midnight-ish. Was up for another 45 - 1 hour. Steve and I alternated going in. Then she had another wake up but went down much faster. Then she decided to wake up 40 mins earlier than what we wanted her wake time to be. We chose to wait til that wake up time to get her up for the day (we did go in to soothe though).

Now for the daytime routine... When she wakes up from a nap we feed her a full bottle and then we have waketime. Playing, reading books, eating her monkey etc. Then when she shows signs of tiredness we put her down for sleep. As per the book "Baby Wise" this process is about 3 hours long. And Ella was right on schedule. We repeated this all day and by her 3rd nap she was falling asleep with less than 5 minutes of crying. 


We are only 24 hours into this process but she has already made huge strides! The one thing that still needs some work is her nap length. "Baby Wise" explains that a baby who wakes up crying after a nap hasn't had enough sleep. They should wake up content and cooing. We are not there yet. She still wakes up after every nap (which is usually only 45 minutes to an hour) crying loudly. The suggestion is that you allow her to cry for 10 minutes and she should settle back down and sleep a while longer. I'll be adding that to the mix tomorrow.

So far tonight she napped at 5:30, woke up at 6:30 crying, she ate, couldnt stay awake so I put her back down. After a little fussing she went back to sleep and now at 9:30 she is still asleep. I'm curious to see how overnight goes. I'll be sure to update this in a week and let you know how much has changed.

Here's to sleeping through the night!

Night 2: she slept from 8pm to 6:30am. Woke up happy. 

Day 2: went down for her naps well. Cries no more than 10mins. Then at 5 we put her down and had to abandon nap time after an hour of crying. She had another bottle (half) then she stayed up til 730 when she looked tired. 30mins in she was still crying. We fed her and she fell asleep. Not ideal but at some point we needed to know she ate enough. 

Night 3: she woke up at midnight per usual but this time took 30 mins to settle down. One belly rub and kiss from me which seemed to make it worse. A brief waking at 2 then up and happy at 630.

**UPDATE**

1 MONTH LATER:

Our lil babe sleeps through the night, every single night (except last night which I'm pretty sure is linked to "4 month sleep regression). She now naps well during the day and wakes up from her naps happy and smiling. Very rarely will she wake up crying. We finally have a well rested and happy baby! She giggles and smiles and plays contently by herself or with us. It is a huge change!

Letting her cry for short periods of time has actually helped us distinguish her cries more accurately. She doesn't really even cry most of the time, its more  like an annoyed fuss. The one downside is that I feel quite tied to her schedule. She can usually stay up for 1.5 - 2 hours after waking up from a nap. Much longer than that and she gets grumpy and has a hard time falling asleep (she's OVERtired). If she falls asleep in the car I can't move her from the car seat because she will wake up, she also doesnt sleep long enough in the car seat.

In general though, sleep training was the best thing we ever did for our family. On top of sleep training, sticking to a schedule of SLEEP, EAT, PLAY, SLEEP is vital!

3 Months Down, A Lifetime To Go

In one weeks time our tiny human will be 3 months and quite frankly I can't believe we survived it! On several occasions we were told "just get through the first couple months". How true is that!!!

Baby's First 3 Months:

Since being blunt is my specialty I'm going to tell you like it is. It bites! The first couple of weeks are nothing short of difficult. You have a baby who is convinced night time is party time and day time is made for sleeping (and if they are anything like my child, naps are no longer than 30 minutes). Your house is a mess, every meal you eat is cold and good luck sneaking in a shower or brushing your teeth.

Everyone tells you "it's a love like you've never known" WRONG! Now it is but not at first. Don't get me wrong, I've loved my baby from the start but when she cries and cries and cries, well, you could imagine it is tough to feel warm and fuzzy. It's much more of a "what the hell child! Why won't you stop crying". Frustrating and exhausting. There were definitely occasions when I wondered what I had gotten myself into and how in the world I was supposed to continue. And then things started to get better.

All of a sudden she started sleeping at night for longer stretches, staying mostly asleep during her middle of the night feeds and the crying went away almost completely.She now has 3 naps a day at almost the exact same time everyday. We are trying to sleep train her so that she will self soothe and fall asleep on her own. Its not a fun process but eventually it will help.

What's even more interesting is about 2 weeks ago I stopped pumping and decided to feed her all formula (with an occasional breastmilk bottle from my frozen stash). It was a really hard decision to stop but my stress level was sky high because I was having supply and pump issues. Since switching she has been happier for sure. Funny what a full belly will do. My guess is that consistent calories are helping her, when I was pumping the amount of fatty milk would vary and the less there is the less filling it is. The only thing it hasn't helped with is night time sleeping. She still doesn't sleep through the night which I was hoping the formula would help with but 4 hour sleep stretches are manageable at least.

The other awesome change is that she really only poops once a day! Hallelujah! In the early days I was shocked at how much poop could come from such a tiny baby and gradually it starts to slow down, thank god for that.  

Mom's First 3 Months:

In 2 words... NOT SEXY. Just yesterday I woke up, said good morning to Steve and then went to shower before I headed out on a road trip for the day. As soon as I looked in the mirror I was shocked that Steve still welcomed me with a warm smile. I must have rubbed my eyes during the night because under my eyes were completely black. I roll out of bed in a whole new level of disarray these days. My hair is a disaster and the word "groggy" doesn't quite cover my lack of energy.

I'm just now getting to the point where I am feeling better about my physical progress. My stomach was always a point of pride for me so it's a real challenge to get past the fact that its a little more jiggly and puffier than I would like. I'm looking forward to the day when I can snuggle up to Steve and not think about how my stomach feels to him.

The baby feeders are deflated now too. Since I've stopped pumping my milk has dried up and left the ladies looking like ski slopes. Good thing we have push up bras!!

The other major change, and thank goodness I was warned about this, is hair loss. Remember that luscious thick hair you had during pregnancy? Well it stays with you until you stop breastfeeding. And then you could swear you are balding. I've lost so much hair I'm surprised there is any left on my head! And it is shocking how fast it happens. I stopped pumping and then quite literally a few days later I'm showering and chunks of hair are coming out. Do yourself a favour and don't let that shit go down the drain. No one wants to clean out wads of hair from the drain, we clean up enough yucky stuff already.
 
Getting Through It All 

Just keep telling yourself it will get better, because it actually does! And take it slow, one day at a time, one week at a time, before you know it months have passed and you actually know what you are doing and what your baby needs even though she doesn't do any better of a job telling you.

My How She's Changed

My little bobble head baby is now holding her head all on her own. She still needs a bit of support on her back because she likes to lean back and then her little abs cant pull her back up. Any minute now she is going to roll over on her own. I actually had a dream last night that she did it so I'm convinced its happening today. She is a chatter box full of little coos, squeals and grunts. Next step, GIGGLES!!!!