Whenever I feel like we've settled into a routine, my son throws me a curve ball. Whether he stops eating cheese (after he wanted nothing but cheese for a week) or decides that golf no longer interests him (after I couldn't separate him from his golf club just the day before) it's always something new. Whoever coined the phrase "The only constant in life is change" must have been a parent.
Nothing throws a bigger wrench into our day-to-day activities than when my son changes his sleep pattern on a whim. We will have just got him into a good groove, napping at the same time everyday, when he starts cutting a new tooth (which results in shorter naps) or insists on sleeping with a binky in his mouth and spares to grab in case he throws one out of the crib or loses it under his blanket (which is a welcome change from darting into his room and removing the binky that fell out of his mouth earlier in the night because if he rolls on it, he'll wake up).
Our current problem is hard to complain about.
First, some background. Hunter hasn't always slept through the night. At about 1 month old, he slept eight solid hours (to which I responded by waking in a panic and immediately checking to make sure he was breathing before insisting he eat the second he wake up. I also called the pediatrician - obviously). This continued until the dreaded, "four month sleep regression," which hit us hard. I did as much research as possible to learn all of the tricks for combating sleep regression as well as educate myself about the scientific background for why all four month olds seem to give up sleep. It lasted probably six weeks -- during which I googled "sleep regression" more times than I can count -- before we fell into a new routine of waking up 1-2 times per night for feedings. I never wanted to sleep train my son and he was only waking me up once (since if he woke up twice the first time was before I'd gone to bed). Plus, he was breastfed and I didn't supplement with formula so I operated under the assumption that he really, truly might be hungry at 2 a.m.
This lasted until right before his first birthday. Trading off wakings every other night with my husband had made those months bearable. More than bearable really. We were all doing just fine. I still didn't want to sleep train. The thought of him crying in his crib by himself broke my heart. After all, he wasn't even a year old yet! And then, the week of his first birthday, Hunter got sick for the first time. We'd been so lucky that he remained healthy for his first year of life (an accomplishment I attributed to frequent breastfeeding and no day care) but when it finally happened, it threw us off.
Of course Hunter had really good timing. He waited for my husband to be on a business trip, during a week that I had limited help from grandparents and aunts do to their own schedules. By day three I was so desperate for sleep that when he woke up for the third or fourth time around 3 a.m., I plopped him right into bed with me and clocked a few more hours. It was the best either of us had slept in days and so I let it continue while my husband was out of town.
We had never really co-slept. In the mornings when my husband would leave for work, I would put newborn Hunter in his snuggle nest in bed with me to catch a few more hours, but he was so little it never affected his sleep patterns. I was dead set on not having a child glued to my bed, and his father was a horrendous sleeper so I always feared for his safety if he were to sleep in bed with both of us. Despite the nights I sometimes wanted to cuddle him in bed, I didn't give in unless there was a reason for his discomfort. I remained firm. And in that one week that Hunter and I were alone, I gave in. I wasn't strong enough on my own. And I was f***ing tired.
From there it spiraled out of control. He slept in bed with me more than not, and when he wasn't in bed with me, he was in my husband's arms, sitting in the rocker in his room (thank God that thing is comfy!). He awoke every hour after his first wake-up of the night and would immediately fall asleep next to either of us but cry the second we tried to lay him back down.
He was sick, we went on vacation, he got a couple teeth and he was sick again. All excuses we used to assure ourselves this wasn't permanent. But after one full month of very little sleep and a fairly complete breakdown that left me begging for answers, I gave in. I finally said "ok, we will sleep train." And the horrific, awful thing I never could condone other mothers doing finally made sense. My son had never slept poorly enough for it to be necessary. But now it was.
The first night was the worst. He cried for an hour. 45 minutes in, I cried, too. My husband had to go in his room every 10 minutes to lay him back down and tell him goodnight. I literally couldn't do it. I knew if I went in there and saw him, reaching up to me and sobbing "mama" I would give in (even as I write this I'm tearing up). But after that hour, the strangest thing happened: he laid down, and fell asleep. He woke up once in the middle of the night, around 3 a.m., cried for 15-minutes and put himself back to bed. And after that night, it was done. He was sleep trained and the world was right again. But that brings us to our next problem:
Now that he sleeps through the night, he pees through his diaper. Every. Single. Night.
We used to always change him when he'd wake up around 2 a.m., but now that he wasn't waking up, we weren't changing him. I've tried SO many diapers, and so far - nothing has worked for more than two days. So while it is, in some ways, a good problem to have, it's still a problem. I'm too afraid to change him once in the middle of the night because - despite my efforts - he is a creature of habit, and as soon as we start waking him up at 10 p.m. for a diaper change, I'm sure he'll wake up every single night at 10 p.m. on his own for the rest of our lives. So, we don't.
But now, he wakes up TOO early. I have been spoiled with sleep and anything before 6 a.m. I have deemed unacceptable. But when he's crying, wet and cold at 5:30 a.m., I can hardly ignore him. So we get up, change every piece of clothing he's wearing, replace all of the bedding and throw his lovey (that he undoubtedly managed to pee on) in the wash. It's a process, a process much too in depth for 5:30 a.m.
I'd love to close this post with a happy little ending about how we found the perfect solution and all is right in the world again. But alas, we haven't. I've tried a couple of tricks - limiting late night water, sizing up in nighttime diapers - to push him back as far as possible, but he's still not making it more than 11 hours. An appropriate amount of sleep at least, but it's not consistent. I hope we find a solution soon. And when we do, I hope to share it with every other mother who has this problem. But for now, I'm just thanking my lucky stars that he's sleeping through the night. I mean, if he's doing that, what right do I have to complain about 5:30 a.m.?
-N
Slightly Crunchy: giving in to some
of the earth-preserving, "granola-esque" qualities that are often
associated with mothers such as cloth diapering, breastfeeding and
organic baby food-making, but without fully embracing the
"make-your-own-clothes-wear-organic-deodorant-all-natural-everything"
lifestyle.
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