the great sleep post

And by "great" I am referring to the length of this post, not the quantity or quality of sleep we are getting.

That's a card my mom sent me a couple months ago, and that's my sister and me in the photo. My dad's mom, my Grammie, used to always remind my mom during hard times that "this too shall pass." It has become my mantra with regard to sleep. The card cracked me up, though, and laughter is, of course, always good medicine in tough times.

If it's not clear already, or if you're not one of the 724 people whom I've consulted about our troubles with sleep, when it comes to this subject, we've been through a lot in the last few months. So where do I start? For Ewan's five month post, I wrote a little bit about our struggles and how, if things didn't improve, we planned to try sleep training, which is a nice way of saying letting Ewan cry it out. This was a last resort for us, not because I think it's a terrible thing to do, but because I flat out didn't know if I could handle it. I have always had a hard time even letting Ewan fuss, let alone cry for long periods of time. I had such anxiety about trying this and agonized over the decision, but I was desperate. So, we picked a week right around Ewan's half-birthday, and I even took an extra day off work so I'd have five straight days to work on sleep. We planned to use a book called the SleepEasy Solution, which is pretty similar to the Ferber method. So, with a bottle of wine waiting for us, that first night we put Ewan down in his crib, drowsy but awake, prepared to let him cry (with regular check-ins from us) for as long as it took. What happened? He fell asleep, with no crying. We couldn't believe it and thought that it was too good to be true. Sure enough, he woke up about an hour later and cried for 30 minutes before falling back to sleep. Without going into detail about everything that followed, I'll summarize by saying that we had very inconsistent progress over the next several nights. There were a couple of nights that Ewan slept for nine or ten hours without a peep, by far a record, and nights where he cried for hours on and off throughout the night. It was on those nights that I was really ready to give in and rescue him, but Troy encouraged me to continue to stick with the program. On one particularly bad night several nights into the program, we all cried a lot, and even when Ewan slept, I couldn't sleep from the stress and guilt and actually ended up having an anxiety attack and vomiting in the middle of the night. I took a mental health day from work the next day and thankfully we had Ewan's six month doctor's appointment scheduled for that afternoon. The doctor, too, encouraged me to stick with the program because we had had some good nights, and she said that usually sleep training does work (even though she herself was currently co-sleeping with her five-month-old). That night went really well. So did the next, but then we had another horrible one. During another long crying episode on night ten (I mean Ewan, but probably me, too - I don't remember), I really really wanted to throw in the towel, and, for the second time, Troy and I agreed that if Ewan didn't stop crying in another fifteen minutes, we would quit. He stopped after ten of the longest minutes of my life. The next day, after a serious, rational talk, we decided that if at any point from then on, Ewan cried for more than a half hour, we would quit the program. It happened in the middle of the night that night. So, on night eleven, I went in and, with a combination of relief and apprehension I didn't think possible, rescued my crying baby and brought him into bed with us.

During our struggles, I talked to a lot of other moms about sleep. For those who tried sleep training and stuck with it, it worked in less than a week, generally with less crying each night. It's easy to look back and question whether it didn't work for us because of something we did, like the couple times I did respond to Ewan's cries by nursing him because I thought he might actually be hungry or the fact that we gave up working on naps after just three days because I couldn't take the around the clock crying and even more significant sleep deprivation for Ewan, but the truth of the matter is that most of the other parents I know who have done this did still respond to their babies cries at night by nursing them and didn't stick to their programs 100 percent, and it still worked. I'm sure there are many, but I personally have only heard of one other baby who took longer than a week to sleep train: the daughter of the famous mom blogger, Dooce. She took a full two weeks, shortly after which Dooce checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. I don't want to make light of her situation and say I think I was headed in that direction, but I was certainly going through some serious emotional difficulties during this time. What did keep me sane was talking to all those other moms, as well as friends and family. I simply could not have gotten through all of that, and would not be coping with our situation in general, without their support. I would have given up much sooner on the sleep training and, in so doing, would probably be kicking myself now and wondering whether it would have worked if we had just given it a little longer. Now I can say we gave it a really good chance to work and I seriously reached my limit before we quit. So, thank you, thank you, thank you to those of you who have been there for me through all of this. You know who you are.

So, where are we now? Back to square one. Actually, worse. Ewan is waking up probably about a dozen times a night on average. I don't know, I don't always look at the clock and I tend to lose count, but it's a lot, and he often wakes up a several times within the first couple hours of us putting him to sleep. As far as we know, there is no medical reason for his waking up so often, although I still sometimes suspect tummy troubles because he often seems really uncomfortable and generally fitfull and restless. Anyway, our current routine is that we still put him to sleep in his crib after going through our normal bedtime routine, and he is usually at least slightly awake and can still settle himself down and fall asleep on his own, although I still stay in the room with him now and pick him back up and rock him if he does start crying. The first time he wakes up after we go to bed, though, which is usually very soon after, we bring him into bed with us and we co-sleep for the rest of the night. How are we coping with this? Actually, really well considering everything. I have a new attitude toward our situation, which I'm usually able to maintain. I think it's the only thing you can do when you feel like your last resort has failed you. As hard as it is to be woken up on an hourly basis, I am relieved to have the ordeal of letting Ewan cry every night over with. I'm sure if it had worked for us, I would have been thrilled, but given what we went through, I feel much better about this arrangement emotionally, and there are some really nice things about it. Troy and I both love having Ewan close and cuddling during the night, especially on days when we work and don't get to see him much. And I've been doing a lot of reading about the benefits of co-sleeping. We are making the best of it by getting ourselves to bed early and napping when we can. Since I do most of the nighttime parenting, Troy gets up early with Ewan on the weekends and I sleep in. We also plan to treat ourselves to a new king size bed. And we are sure to focus on the little signs of progress, like the fact that, although he often still needs to nurse or be held and rocked when he wakes up, Ewan is also now sometimes able to fall back to sleep with us just patting or rubbing his back or snuggling him in closer, and that was never the case before.

As for naps, there have been some positive changes. For a long time Ewan was taking four little catnaps a day, usually about 30 minutes each, and no matter what we did, we couldn't get him to sleep for longer. Now I have gotten in the habit, on my days off, of taking Ewan's first morning nap in bed with him, and not only is it so nice to curl up with him and snooze, but he generally sleeps a little longer that way - usually closer to an hour. His second nap often starts out in the stroller when we're out for a walk and sometimes I can transfer him to his crib or hold him and let him sleep a little longer, but sometimes it ends up just being a 20 or 30 minute nap. For the last several days, I've put him down for his third nap in his crib and, when he wakes up after his usual 30 minutes or so, I've actually been able to nurse him back to sleep. The problem is that he wakes right back up if I put him back in his crib, so I've just been holding him and rocking him during that time, and he's had a few hour and 45 minute naps that way. You may think I'm crazy for being willing to hold him that whole time, but I actually really look forward to it. There is nothing sweeter than watching your baby sleep peacefully in your arms. It's my time to study every little detail of this precious being: his soft blond hair that's growing thicker and longer every day, his mile-long eyelashes, his cute upturned nose, his chubby pink cheeks, his sweet baby mouth, his pudgy hands complete with those adorable dimpled knuckles... you get the idea. And when I'm not staring at my sleeping baby treasuring the present moment or reflecting on his earlier days or fantasizing about our future with him, I read. And read. I never have time to read anymore, so this is my chance. And it's much more fun than doing housework, which I would at least be feeling pressure to do if I weren't holding Ewan. I know, I know, just wait until we have another baby. But to me that's even more of a reason to indulge myself and Ewan in this luxury while we can. Like I said, if the sleep training had worked and Ewan was taking two two-hour naps in his crib every day, I'm sure I'd be thrilled with all the time I would suddenly have on my hands, but this is my way of making the best of our not so ideal situation. Plus, I think it's good for us both and will make for some nice memories, and I'm pretty sure I won't ever regret having held my baby so much when he was little.

So that's where we are with sleep. We are making the best of it and surviving, which is sometimes all you can do. And of course we're remembering that this too shall pass.