Bedtime Strategies

I realized that in my last post I made it sound like Baby E always cries a lot when we put her to bed, and that's not really the case.

Basically, our approach to sleep so far has been the "whatever works" approach. We've found quite a few approaches that don't work, and we're still refining the method to figure out exactly what works for us--and for her, of course.

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From birth to 7 months, Baby E slept in the sidecar crib in our room. Essentially she was sleeping in our bed (sometimes in the attached crib that extended the space, frequently in the big bed or halfway in each). Often she'd fall asleep nursing or being held, and at other times we'd lay her down almost asleep. Sometimes we tried to put her to bed on her own, but often she went to bed at the same time we did. We were right there next to her while she slept.

For the first few months (well, once I stopped eating things that made her horribly ill and colicky, anyway) that seemed to work well for us. But after that neither Baby E nor I was able to sleep well in that arrangement.

Our problem was not so much getting her to sleep in the first place, as much as getting her to stay asleep. She'd doze off while we were holding or nursing her. If she didn't wake up when we laid her down or shifted her position in our arms (it didn't matter whether we were trying to lay her down 2 minutes or 62 minutes from when she fell asleep--the change in position often woke her even if she was limp-limbed and sound asleep), she'd often wake up 15-35 minutes later, maybe 50 minutes at the most.

Then she'd either be up every hour all night or she'd decide to be awake for one or two 2-4 hour stretches in the middle of the night. No amount of nursing, rocking, singing, lying down with her or letting her cry alone seemed to make any difference once she decided to be awake. She'd had her cat nap and was awake for the duration.

If Baby E and I both fell asleep while I was nursing her, which happened more often than not, I'd wake up an hour or so later. If I tried to detach her from suckling (the child can literally nurse-sleep for 3 hours straight) or reposition myself at all, she'd usually wake up.

So I'd end up either being up with her for the next hour trying to hold her off until it had been at least 2 hours since she last ate, or I'd just roll over and let her nurse on the other side until we went through the whole performance again an hour or two later, and then an hour after that, and so on through the night.

She was a very light sleeper and if either of us rolled over, got up to use the bathroom, or made any sound, she would usually wake up. If we kept the lights low and didn't speak or interact with her much, she might go back to sleep. But if it was necessary to change a diaper or anything like that, she'd probably be awake for a long time no matter what we did, even with me lying in bed with her trying to nurse her to sleep.

Figuring out that she had food allergies helped a lot with the marathon screaming sessions (which mostly took place while we were holding and trying to soothe her for hours on end) and at least cut down on the crying at night. I'm sure it helped somewhat with her sleep issues, too.

From the very beginning, though, if she didn't want to go to sleep nothing worked to make her sleep. We could rock and nurse her till the cows came home. If she was even extremely tired but not sleepy she'd just wriggle, fuss and play. We could put her in the crib and she'd just scream--and scream and scream. She could keep alternating the squirming and playing in our arms or screaming and playing in her crib literally for hours.

I don't know how she could manage to stay awake for so long. If I hadn't seen it for myself I wouldn't think it humanly possible for a baby to get by on so few hours of sleep over so many months.

Some nights she slept for 30 minutes, was awake for 30 minutes, slept for 20 minutes, was awake for 30 minutes again, slept for an hour, woke up for 20 minutes, slept for an hour and then was up for 4 hours, at which time the other girls were getting up and I'd need to get up with them while Baby E finally fell asleep for another 2-3 hours.

But every now and then she'd sleep great for a week or two, sleeping for 5-6 hours at a stretch and waking up briefly only 2-3 times during the night. For a couple glorious weeks once or twice, she slept for 6-8 hours at a time. We weren't able to figure out what we were doing differently at those times and reproduce it, though.

Any night she woke up briefly 5 times or less was a good night.

Her naps were just as unpredictable. Sometimes she wouldn't nap at all no matter what we did, and other times she'd nap for an hour in the morning and then 3 hours in the afternoon. Other times she'd nap for 15-20 minutes and that was all.

When we moved her crib into her own room in February, when she was 7 1/2 months old, the number of wakings per night went down significantly. She still ends up in our bed if she wakes every hour for more than 2-3 times, because broken and restless sleep is better than no sleep, but most nights since we moved her to her own room she doesn't wake more than 3-5 times. It helped even more when we started playing music on endless repeat for some white noise.

But what really seemed to help was when we started making a point to put her down consistently at the same time each day for naps and bed--and earlier than we were trying to put her down when trying to just follow her signals. It only works when we're consistent about it, but it works. And, somehow, it usually results in 3 or fewer wakings at night. So that's what we're doing now.

Sometimes she'll nurse or be rocked to sleep, and that's great. Other times no matter how much I nurse, rock or sing she just seems to get more and more wired. She'll flail around in my arms, either trying to play or fussing. She'll refuse to nurse and angrily throw any toy or comfort object I try to hand her. If I don't put her down on the floor to play she'll get more and more agitated until she's slapping my face in anger and throwing her body violently around, screaming.

Dr. Sears' advice notwithstanding, this child will often flat-out refuse to be "parented to sleep." In that case, often when I put her in the crib she'll cry for a couple of minutes or so and then settle down almost as in relief that I finally put her down in her crib where she can sleep.

If we wait until she wants to go to sleep, she will be up until sometime between midnight and 3 a.m. every night, and then wake frequently (sometimes for long periods) during the night. We just can't function on such a routine.

So it's on the nights when she's fed, dry and comfortable but refuses to settle down even with rocking and nursing that the method I laid out in yesterday's post comes into play. It usually happens that way for the better part of a week or two whenever her sleep pattern has been disrupted, but once she is getting adequate sleep and used to the routine she will go down with no more than a few minutes of fussing, wake up happy, and be much more contented during the day.

I think that Baby E is, probably more than most babies, affected by being overtired to the point that it makes her have difficulty sleeping. The "sleep begets sleep" saying definitely seems to hold true for her. Also, since she is a very light sleeper I've had to resort to using white noise a lot despite my concern of making her dependent on it. Once she's not so overtired we'll see if we can slowly wean her off it. If not, needing white noise to sleep is better than just not sleeping.

So now that we've found a method that seems to work while also preserving our sanity, the next step is making it consistent. It will probably mean hampering our activities quite a lot for several weeks or maybe even many months. I've always been one of those "just take the kids along and go do stuff anyway" kind of moms, but I'm willing to give that up for the most part if it means we'll get to sleep at night.

Obviously, many months of severe sleep deprivation have taken their toll. And I've compounded it by staying up far too late on the nights when Baby E did go to sleep early--either because my body's gotten used to a bedtime after midnight or because I'm somehow sabotaging myself, I'm not sure which. Maybe both.

I have been barely functional much of the time for the past year (the 10+ months since Baby E was born and the 6 weeks of early labor leading up to that). We're all tired. We're all tired of being tired. The older girls don't function well when we're not being consistent with their bedtimes, too.

So DH and I had a talk today. We're going to give ourselves a trial of at least a week or two, being very strict with the whole family's sleep schedule. We'll try to get ourselves, the older two girls and Baby E down to bed and naps consistently at the same times every day. No exceptions unless there are truly exceptional circumstances. We will plan our schedule around naps and bedtimes. No more fruitless attempts to get napping to happen in the car while driving, and no more skipping or delaying naps and bedtime for outings or company. After that time period we'll take stock and see if we want to keep it up, start being more flexible, or try something else.

The hardest part will be being strict with ourselves about going to bed on time, I'm sure. It's one thing to put the kids to bed on time; quite another to do it for ourselves.