Sleep woes…

Bella is currently in a sleep-less cycle.  We go through phases, some she sleeps better, some worse, right now it is definitely in the “worse” phase.  She goes to bed late, gets up early, and tries to sleep horizontal all night long, kicking mama and pushing on Daddy.

So, what to do?

If past experience is any indication, just wait it out.

She goes through these phases, and when she is sleeping well, she sleeps very well.  She goes down easily, sleeps soundly, and sleeps a reasonable length of time.  When she’s not sleeping well she just isn’t, and it hasn’t seemed to matter what I do.

I confess that there are moments when she just won’t.  go.  to.  sleep.   When I get so frustrated, and I snap at her, “JUST LAY DOWN!”   Every once in a blue moon, that actually works, she lies down and goes to sleep!  (A miracle!)  But most of the time, it just makes her feel crappy.  Then it makes me feel crappy.  Then I remember being little, and scared, and unable to sleep, and my mom yelling at me, and then I get all upset with myself for snapping.  Getting her to sleep a few minutes sooner just isn’t worth making both of us feel awful.  The truth is that I wasn’t a very good sleeper either, and had many battles throughout my life with my mother, and having her anger directed at me when I was already desperately tired didn’t help things at all.

So, I wait it out.  I wish I had thought of it more this way when she was littler, because I stressed over her sleep *so* much, and honestly nothing I ever tried really accomplished anything.   I wish I could have talked myself through it a bit more, reminding myself that these are phases, many times sleep disruptions occur during developmental leaps, and ultimately:  this too shall pass.  It would’ve saved me a lot of useless anger.

Edited: September 8th, 2009

Sleep is for the weak…

By which I mean me, of course!
Not that it matters, my daughter has firm beliefs about my need for sleep being irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. This blog, Sleep is for the Weak, is one that has really helped me on occasion. I think sometimes it helps just to know that you aren’t alone, especially in the middle of the night when you are so, so, so exhausted. The site offers lots of advice and BTDT for AP moms who aren’t going to let their little ones cry alone in the dark.
Bella has not been sleeping much this past week, and whenever I’m getting really really really exhausted like I am right now, I find myself saying “Sleep is for the weak!” (Yes, I am weak, please let me go to sleep little girl!)

Edited: March 13th, 2009

Bed sharing and infant safety

The CDC recently released a press release saying that bed sharing is unsafe for infants and has caused an increase in deaths. You’ll be happy to hear that this is actually not true, but simply a misinterpretation of the study results.

What appears to have happened is that the criteria for SIDS have been made much stricter. Therefore, deaths that were attributed to SIDS in the past are now classified as “accidental suffocation or strangulation in bed.”

Definitely check it out, it’s well worth the read!

Edited: February 5th, 2009

Scream-it-out

Lately, other moms are driving me nuts. I am on no high horse; I’m well aware that mothering is a journey we are all on, and most of us are trying to do our best for our kids. Some, I’m happy to judge, like Racist Mom (who believes that the 9th Ward destruction was really “no big deal”), and Sexist Mom. But mostly, no, I don’t judge. I’m not perfect. I have yelled, cried, sobbed, ran into the bathroom and locked myself in while my daughter cried for me, I’ve done all kinds of things to cope with being a mom. I do the best I can, and I try harder when I screw it up (which is often).
But… screaming it out?
First, I do disagree with CIO (cry it out) as a parenting method for most kids. I know that for some kids it works great; they cry for a few minutes and then settle down and go to sleep. Excellent! I don’t have a problem with that. But most parents hear “cry it out” and believe that they should let their child cry for as long as it takes. (Which is, btw, not at all what Ferber recommends!) So you wind up with situations like this one.
Today in preschool my daughter was all enamored of one of her friends, little 2 year old G, and her big sister, 4 year old M. They were loving on each other, hugging each other, playing together, and my daughter was just in love. She was following them around with stars in her little eyes. I have baby lust anyways, so I said something about how Bella obviously wants a sibling just as much as I do. Her mom said “Yeah, good luck with that!” I replied with something about how Bella has been really challenging and I hope my next child is a bit easier, and asked if G (her second) was easier?
She rolled her eyes and said NO, G is *worse.* Would I believe that she didn’t get any sleep the night before because G screamed all night long?
She told me that G screamed and screamed and screamed for three solid hours before she lost track. But that she can’t give in because “then it would all be downhill!” (As if it could get worse? How exactly could it get worse?)
I was dumbfounded, and rendered speechless. Not a state I am used to. I really like this little girl, G, and she is adorable! Bella likes her and was saying her name. So it felt personal to me in a way that hearing stories of babies on the internet does not. I stammered out something about us co-sleeping, and the mom responded that she did co-sleep with M, but couldn’t with G. “It’s not fair to M, you know? Since she is not allowed to do it anymore, I don’t see how we can let G do it.”
But it’s FAIR to let the little one scream alone in a crib all night?
What is fair about that?
I myself have succumbed to the “You’re just not being firm enough” monster of popular parenting several times myself, always to have it blow up in my face. Bella doesn’t respond well to strong arm tactics. There are more than one way to do things. So why do so many parents paint themselves into a corner like this? Why is this the hill she wants to die on?
I was still thinking about all of this while I put Bella down for her nap. We’ve been working on her night time sleep and it has gotten much better this week, but naps are still kind of askew. I held her snuggled up close to me while she had a bottle. She lay there staring dreamily off into space and very gently stroking my eyelashes. She has never done that before, but it was pretty amazing. Then when she clearly was unable to fall asleep, I threw her on my back and pulled out the vacuum. Within three minutes, she was out like a light, and has been for the past two hours.
Why not invest the time to parent your child to sleep instead of leaving them to scream? Let’s say that it takes 45 minutes of your day. That is still better than hour upon hour of screaming, isn’t it?
This has certainly given me a new perspective into my own child’s sleep woes.
I don’t get it. And this is one of the very few times when I’m glad to say that my way is better.

Edited: October 8th, 2008

Sleepless

We have been going through some really brutal sleep issues. That’s nothing new of course, but it’s been even worse lately! (Every time I think it cannot get worse, it does.) I have been reassuring myself by reading (and re-reading, after all, I slept through it the first time) Ask Moxie’s post about the 18 month sleep regression, which we’ve been dealing with for the past several months. It’s been awful. Example: Bedtime at 8pm, but up at 11pm… and up until 4am! This is with us trying everything we can think of, to get her to sleep. Actually, mostly me… after all, my husband has to get up at 6:30 and go to work! But at 3am I finally got him up and asked him to take her out for a drive, I was just so frustrated.
Of course she can tell when I get frustrated too, and she starts doing this adorable little “Hi!” thing that just drives me even more insane because HELLO GO TO SLEEP I AM TIRED OF YOUR CUTE ALREADY.
Last night was better. I decided to fight it out with her and keep her in bed even if she wanted out. Well, that wound up being a big mistake because after a 2 hour battle, she took a huge poop, and then went right to sleep. ARGH!
Today I went out and bought every sleep book available. Of course, tonight she went down to sleep without a hitch and is sleeping like a gorgeous angel. No longer a baby, though, definitely a child now, long strong legs curled against a pillow, face all shmooshed up. So gorgeous. Cannot believe she is not a baby anymore. Cannot believe she is finally asleep!

Edited: July 25th, 2008

Whatcha reading?

Bella *adores* books. I do love watching her with books, and how excited she is about books, and I love to read to her and with her. So we have a pretty big line-up of books we read before bedtime every night. (Well, most nights; lately her routine has been, erhhmmm, completely out of kilter, so we haven’t read as much.) Here’s our current stash.

I love Sandra Boynton! What are you reading to your little ones at night?
I can’t wait until Bella is old enough to get chapters, and I can read her all of my childhood favorites; Harriet the Spy, A Wrinkle in Time, Bridge to Terabithia (nope, I did not see the movie), James and the Giant Peach, oh so many wonderful books!

Edited: May 8th, 2008

Common sense co-sleeping

I love sleeping with my baby. The whole idea of co-sleeping, when I first read about it, resonated on a really profound level with me. It just seems natural to me to sleep near my child, and in fact I quite literally cannot imagine having her in another room far away from me. I certainly can’t imagine anywhere safer for *my* child than to be close to me all night long.

Bella’s first night in the world, she spent at least three hours sleeping curled up in a ball on her Daddy’s tummy. Most. Adorable. Ever. My husband was glowing. Just wonderful. But then after that, he was snoozing and I had to figure out what to do with this tiny, precious little thing in our bed. I was suddenly terrified of rolling over on her, or pulling the blankets over her, or smothering her, or… well, you know, new mama paranoia.

(more…)

Edited: April 26th, 2008

Cosleeping…

My baby is a horrible sleeper. She is 15 months old (almost, on the 30th!), and not only does she not sleep through the night, lately getting her to sleep at all has been a huge battle. It used to be that she went to sleep relatively easily and then woke up to eat several times a night, with occasional waking-to-party evenings as well. Of course it’s sleep, and the one thing I’ve learned as a mama so far is that sleep is never constant with babies. She’s perpetually learning, her brain is growing, her body is growing, her mind is making huge leaps all the time, so it’s no wonder. Not to mention teething, yikes.
But boy, waking up next to her is such a delight. Even when I’m exhausted, even when I’m thinking “Oh please go back to sleep!” (which is often), Bella’s wake-up calls make me smile. She will often sit up next to me, and start hollering… “AH!” Very short kind of staccato sound, until I wake. If that doesn’t work she will start patting me impatiently, and finally she will start climbing on me, pushing my shirt out of the way to latch on. Usually she is all smiles, so that there in the gloom the first thing I see when I open my bleary eyes is that beautiful, radiant smile. I wind up beginning my day with nursies and covering her with kisses, which in my not-so-humble opinion, is a pretty amazing way to start a day.
It does, it makes up for all the sleepless nights. Tonight she just couldn’t fall asleep and I wound up having to drive her down. She fell asleep in her carseat holding her baby doll, which is the first time she’s done that. I adore her.

Edited: March 29th, 2008

I should really be sleeping right now…

I don’t know why I’m still awake, honestly, this is just not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. But dammit, it is so nice to have a few, just a few, moments of peace in a day. Oh how I adore my gorgeous little daughter, but man, she is a demanding little thing! Not only does she want 100% of my attention 24/7, but her sleep of late has been craptastic. Well, let me rephrase: more craptastic than usual. Last night she was up from 11pm until 3am! Then the little bugger had the nerve to wake up for the day at her normal time of 7:30am. I am so tired.
Honestly I feel like a terrible mother. During the day I just adore my little one, I cover her with kisses, I patiently play all the games, I read the books over and over again, I do all the mom stuff. (Although today I confess to using some tv to help; I was just so tired!) But at night, when she won’t sleep, cannot sleep, and is just miserable in every way… I swear I cannot stand her. I want to throw her out a window. I want to run away, go get a hotel, crawl into a comfy bed and just… GO. TO. SLEEP.
Worse yet, when she is in that kind of mood my husband really cannot do anything for her, she just wants mama, and she is very specific about *how* she wants mama. Mama cannot just hold her, I have to wear her on my back, I cannot sit and rock on the ball, I have to walk (or vice versa, depending). On and on and on. Last night after hours of walking around the house (and around, and around, and around), and rocking on the ball (and rocking, and rocking, and rocking), I finally took her for a drive at 2:30 in the morning, and she finally, FINALLY fell asleep.
Oh, so why am I not in bed right now? I do not even know. I guess I am venting, and also kind of wired, you know that wired feeling you get when you are just soooooo tired. I am worried she will do what she did last night, and wake up just as I’m coming to bed.
I’m starting to think that dosing a child with a little benadryl really isn’t such a bad thing after all, and for even thinking such a thing I’m sure I should turn my crunchy card in. Oh well.
OK, I’m going to go crawl into bed. Wish me luck.

Edited: March 26th, 2008

Co-sleeping…

I guess this isn’t actually co-sleeping, since it was before Daddy jumped in bed with her… (Moments before) But we just think she looks positively adorable in this big bed all by her teensy little self…

A close up…

She sleeps on her side, the better to nuzzle in to mama when she comes to bed. Sleepy angel!

Edited: April 21st, 2007