Confessions of a Sleepless Mommy

I have a confession to make. I haven't had a full night's sleep in over a year.

Horatio had pretty normal newborn sleep patterns. He awoke every few hours, I would nurse him, he would go back to sleep. His doctor told me at his 2 month visit that she is "ruthless" about sleep by 4 months. I was delighted that by 4 months, he was sleeping at least until 4am. The ruthless doctor and I were both satisfied with this.

Then school started. Horatio started waking up more at night. I kind of expected this. He didn't see me during most of the day and needed that time to reconnect through nursing. Even though he got ample nourishment through pumped milk while he was away from me, it is about more than food, so I understood.

But he kept waking up more and more and it sometimes became hard to get him to go back to sleep unless he was right up against me. I was exhausted, both because of his wakings and because I have to get up quite early to get to work.

It went beyond just adjusting to Momma being at work all day. Then it was, "Well, he's sick." "Well, he's teething." "Well, he's going through separation anxiety."

Well, well, well...

I don't do "cry it out." It is just not a parenting technique that appeals to me. And I really don't think it would work with him. When his cries go unanswered, or when we aren't able to sooth him for some reason, he works himself into a frenzy - not conducive to sleep for any of the parties involved.

I read The No-Cry Sleep Solution when he was still bitty, hoping to head off the ruthless doctor. I've known for a while now that techniques from that book would help me. It's just that they mostly result in less sleep in the short term. Yes, it is worth it because eventually you have a baby who sleeps multiple hours at a time. But just in that moment, when you can barely keep your eyes open, when you are calculating how few hours of sleep you will end up with tonight if you get out of bed, it is hard to decide to do what will make your baby into a good sleeper over what will just make him asleep.

But I'm pretty sure long-term sleep depravation is actually making me crazy. And I'm getting sick even more often than usual for a teacher with children in day care. Fortified with resolve from reading the Zen Habits blog and successfully beginning to cultivate other positive habits through small changes, I'm finally doing it.

I'm giving up even more of my precious sleep to gently train Horatio to sleep through the night.

John and I moved the crib away from the bed several weeks ago, but Horatio was still ending up in our bed most nights. No more. We are actually getting up and putting him back to sleep in his crib.

(Co-sleeping can be great and worked for us for a while. It just isn't working any more, and getting Horatio out of our bed seems to be an important step toward getting him to sleep better.)

We have even started putting him in the crib when he is not 100% asleep. This is a difficult thing to do and sometimes takes multiple tries. I promise myself that if I try 5 times and it doesn't work, I can do whatever I need to do. But the thing is that I used to give up after 2 or 3 tries, thinking, "This will never work!" Knowing I only have to try 5 times helps me to go on, and it actually hasn't taken 5 tries yet.

He is getting to where he will roll over and go to sleep the first time I put him down, maybe with a little bit of a back rub. And a couple times I've tried getting him back to sleep without nursing him, but I'm not going to push that step until we've mastered the first one.

Really getting up with him has made me realize how bad the sleep problem had become. He was waking up every two hours. Actually worse than when he was a newborn. And I had no idea because I wasn't getting all the way up.

The frequency of his waking has also been improving a little bit. It's not much, but I've only been doing this for a couple weeks. I know it will keep getting better.

To complicate things, Horatio is teething - and probably will be for most of the next year. I'm starting to notice when his restlessness is caused by pain, aided by the fact that he points at his mouth while crying. He gets pain relievers when this happens and usually settles down after a few minutes.

I'm putting this all here mostly because I need something to keep me honest. Even though I know it is working, in the late night fog there is always the temptation to snuggle him next to me and settle for a full night of half-sleep.

I'll be giving intermittent reports on building one positive sleep habit at a time. And before too long, I hope to be reporting that my neurons are firing at full capacity thanks to actually getting some sleep.