Here's what sleep has looked like for us over the past six months:
- During the last trimester of my pregnancy, I was getting up 5-6 times a night to use the bathroom. Everyone kept telling me to "sleep while you can." Ha.
- James was born. I didn't sleep for about a day before he was born, and about a day after. But I was pretty high on lovely birth hormones and honestly didn't feel tired. Amazing thing, those hormones.
- During the first two weeks of James's life, he ate every 2 hours. This was partly because he was a little jaundiced and had an almost 10% weight loss 1-2 days after he was born. Very frequent breastfeeding is the perfect remedy for those issues, and I knew that breastfeeding around the clock would help build up my supply and get his weight gain started. (The amount of breastfeeding you do in the first two weeks after birth lays down the prolactin receptors that store your milk for the duration of while you breastfeed - so it's super important.) We were pretty by the book and didn't introduce a bottle until the recommended 3-4 week mark. So you can do the math here. I honestly didn't sleep for longer than 2 hours that entire time. I didn't know a person could actually survive on so little sleep. Turns out you can.
- From that time until about 6 weeks, James slept sporadically and woke often while he was getting used to his circadian rhythm and going (slightly) longer stretches without eating. He hated to be put down during this time and got his best sleep on us. So we did a lot of couch sleeping. Eventually, we found we could put him down in his carseat, which is how James slept for 3-4 weeks. Sometimes he used a little cradle by his bed, but preferred the snug fit and incline of the carseat. He occasionally slept 3, 4 or maybe 5 hours total at a time. He was always swaddled and would constantly wake himself up with his hands otherwise. He could easily block out noise and slept great in restaurants and on outings such as car rides.
- Somewhere around the 2 month mark, James finally started "sleeping through the night," which is defined as 5 continuous hours of sleep for a baby this age. He usually woke anywhere from 2-4 times a night to eat or be rocked back to sleep in his cradle. He naturally began his longest sleep stretch around 7 or 8 p.m., so we made that his bedtime. He would be up for the day anywhere between 5 - 6 a.m.
- At 3 months, James was sleeping like a dream. We were regularly getting 10 or so hours of sleep a night with only 1 or 2 wakings. And they were almost always between 3 and 3:30 a.m., so eventually I started waking up at that time before he would. James was easily nursed to sleep and put in his Rock n' Play (cradle). We started a bedtime routine (bath, lotion, pjs/swaddle, lights out, look at his soothing seahorse toy, nurse) and James's nap times during the day became slightly more predictable - though we weren't ever very successful putting him down for naps so he mostly slept in our arms. Nighttime was easy - James slept 7 or 8 hour stretches often. Life was awesome.
- Enter the infamous "4 Month Wakeful" period. This is a pretty well-documented phenomenon which occurs during the 4 month developmental stage where babies start to become very aware of their environment and want to be awake and play. I first noticed signs of it while nursing. James used to take 30 minutes or so to eat, and would often fall asleep. Then he began playing more, talking more, smiling, and wanted to eat but also wanted to multi-task and do other things. When focused on eating, he would finish in 10 or so minutes and want to move on and look around. Nursing him became challenging because he was fidgety and would try to watch tv, start giggling or do something else cute that made it hard to focus on the task at hand. Suddenly, he became hard to put down at night - often taking an hour or longer to go to sleep. Bedtime required either a silent or white noise environment that was dark, calm, and distraction-free. Once asleep, he started waking at random times (maybe midnight, 3, then 5, then 7 or any random pattern therein). He still needed swaddling (we had one very unsuccessful experiment going swaddle-free) and slept best in his Rock n' Play since it cradles him so nicely.
So here we are at 4 months. Right now, I'd say I'm just about as tired as I was the first month. Except I've had a small taste of the whole "sleeping through the night" thing and miss it dearly. One of the most difficult aspects of the sleep regression phenomenon is that unlike last December, I now get up for the day and have to get dressed and leave for work where I'm expected to act like a normal (awake) person. Last week I was so exhausted one day that I actually started counting the freckles on someone's face to keep myself awake while they were talking to me. I feared that any prolonged period of inactivity will result in my conking out on the job - so any free time is spent walking around the hospital, going to get tea or talking to my coworkers to keep me busy. Because I am still breastfeeding, I've avoided caffeine save for the occasional cup of decaf or a can of cola here and there. I'd pretty much do anything to be able to chug down an energy drink or triple shot latte in the morning, except that James would inherit the caffeine along with me, thus exacerbating the root cause of the problem itself.
Along with the recent development of sleep deprivation has come many discussions we've had about so-called "sleep training." This is the part of parenting where you somehow help your baby migrate into their own room, crib, etc. and help them learn to fall asleep (and stay asleep) by themselves. I've read more books on the subject than I care to admit and gotten the "sleep training" rundown from almost all the moms I know. Most of the suggested ways to achieve this goal involve letting your baby cry - a lot - until they "learn" to self-soothe and go to bed alone. It's not recommended before 5-6 months since babies aren't cognitively capable of learning this skill before then (letting them cry early on will just result in a defeated, hopeless, frustrated baby). I'm in the middle of reading the "No-Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantley which promises some good suggestions but I'm also sure isn't cry-free. No matter what we do, it seems this transition is most definitely going to involve less sleep and more crying. Both Adam & I feel that the Ferber method of "crying it out" (closing the door and allowing prolonged crying even if it results in your baby throwing up and wailing for an hour) is not for us. Tomorrow we have our 4-month checkup and I'd like to hear our pediatrician's take on the sleep issue to see if she has any ideas.
Until then, we are surviving and loving life with our sweet (wakeful) baby. It's hard to stay frustrated when I see his cute face in the morning, awake and ready to check out the world. It's one of the toughest aspects of having a baby but a small price to pay for the gift of James and the joy of this time in our lives. This time is already passing so quickly and I know I will miss it a great deal, and that I'll never get it back. Obviously this is all stuff I expected as a first-time parent. I guess I feel the need to blog about it because I like to look back and remember what these days are like. James has already changed and grown so much that I find myself feeling wistful for the tiny little baby he was back in November. Sure, we don't sleep much. But our family is full-up on love, snuggles, and good times with our beautiful baby boy.
I also have a mantra that I repeat often (daily) which helps me get through it: Next year, I will sleep....Next year, I will sleep....Next year, I will sleep.
