sweet sleep

I haven't wanted to write this post as I don't want to seem like a ranting new mom full of nothing but complaints, so I'm going to try to do my best to stay positive ... which is hard when you're going on 7 months of sleep deprivation ... oops, already being negative ... my bad ...

So, I don't remember when it was that I blogged that J had started sleeping through the night. I think she'd slept 6+ hrs in a row for 4 nights or so. Yeah, well, that lasted a week or so and then slowly dwindled back to around 4 hrs (so getting up 2-3 times in the night). I wasn't surprised and hoped that since she'd done it, she'd do it again. Well, she leaves me still hoping ...

At 5 months or so, she was pretty consistently getting up 2 times in the night, but at no predicable times or at no predicable intervals, so it's not like I knew that once she went down at night she'd be up 6 hrs later or anything like that. THAT would be too easy. No, she'd get up after 2, 4, maybe even 6 hrs on occasion. At the time, I was totally stressing over this. I figured I had to be doing something wrong. I read sleep books, I talked to friends, I even called the lactation consultants trying to figure out what I should be doing differently to fix this issue. After all, babies are just machines that break and need fixing right? ugh. When I'd get up to feed her in the night, I'd beat myself up about the whole thing, wondering where I'd gone wrong, what I should have done differently, why nothing was working, why all my friends babies slept through the night (ok, that's a slight exaggeration), but mine didn't. It's so easy to be negative at 2:30 am. It was horrible - not so much J, but more me and what I was doing to myself.

The nights continued about like this until mid-December when J hit her 6 month growth spurt. I know the books say that growth spurts last 24-48 hours, but for J, the major ones (3 and 6 months so far) last MUCH longer (like 2 weeks until things settle back down). She decides to throw everything to the wind and start all over - eating, napping, night waking, etc. The 6 month growth spurt was further complicated by the introduction of solids and our Christmas time traveling.

Eating - Am I the only mom that was a bit confused about when exactly you're supposed to feed the babe solid foods? Yeah, I know start them around 6 months, but like what time of day? I think her eating schedule irregularities were more the result of me trying to get this figured out than it was her ... we finally seem to sort of have a routine, though she's only having 2 solid food meals so far (haven't worked in breakfast yet).

Napping - J dropped her 4th nap right at 5 months and decided right around 6 months to drop the 3rd. Nap dropping is INSANE, but we survived. Thankfully 2 naps means that they are typically longer, so no more 45 min naps! Also, a HUGE plus, J now puts herself down for naps some of the time. I have a draft blog post about this somewhere I should finish ...

Night Waking - This has gotten better and worse.

Better - The length of the night wakings was increasing like crazy around 5 months. I'd gone from just feeding her and laying her down (she'd stay asleep), to feeding her and spending 15-45 minutes laying her down and picking her up and walking around with her (she'd wake up and cry when I laid her down). I hate crying, which is why I continued to pick her up, but I realized that my attempts to avoid her crying were in fact making the situation worse (less sleep for both of us). So, I used the Ferber method to deal with this after I'd fed her, and we saw pretty quick results. She still crys for a few minutes on occasion, but is usually good once I lay her down.

Worse - She's randomly thrown in a wake up 45 min-1 hr after falling asleep (this was at 6 months). This totally puzzled me and still puzzles me. I'm currently doing Ferber when she does this mostly because I don't know what else to do. It's frustrating because I had hoped after Ferberizing a few nights she wouldn't wake up at this point anymore (or if she did she'd be able to put her self back to sleep), but that hasn't been the case. I hold my breath when we're approaching the 45 min mark.

It was especially bad when we were traveling as I couldn't let her cry at all. Lets just say that the last 3 nights of our trip we slept in the recliner together and leave it at that ...

If you're thinking, wow, that's a total mess, I'd have to agree. So, now for the good news. I came to the realization - with some help from my wonderful hubby - that this total mess is not my fault. I kept dwelling on what I should have done differently, blaming myself for J's bad sleep, or J having to cry, thinking I'd screwed up somehow. But, that's not the case at all. I make the best decisions I know how to make using my best judgment, and while I'm definitely NOT perfect at this whole parenting thing, God uses it for His glory in J's life. I pray about J's sleep a lot. I pray God will use my feeble efforts to achieve good sleep for the two of us ... and soon :)