Knock On Wood

I really hate to even "say" this out loud, but here goes.  Jude has slept through the night TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW.  Now, if you follow my blog or facebook, you will know that this is something we've been battling for quite some time.  A quick background:  Jude has never slept for longer than four hours at a time consistently.  Sure, here or there he will go for maybe five hours, but these events are very few and far between.  As I've previously stated, when we brought Jude home from the hospital, Phil and I both agreed that we weren't going to let him cry it out.  I am not judging anyone who does, but we felt it just wasn't something we were willing to do, for multiple reasons.  I naively thought that Jude would definitely wake for the first 3 or 4 months, but he would eventually outgrow it and he would sleep peacefully through the night.  Wrong.

Once 8 months rolled around and I realized that Jude wasn't figuring out sleeping through the night on his own, I went to Borders (and didn't have a repeat breastfeeding/poopsplosion incident thankyouverymuch) and grabbed Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution (NCSS).  After Googling and reading what Dr. Sears (whose childrearing philosophies I have really gotten on board with) had to say, I decided this option would be the best for us.  It basically teaches to attend to the babies needs at night so they do not cry, but slowly wean them off whatever association the baby has with sleep so they can eventually fall asleep without it.  Jude had quite the perfect storm of elements needed in order to fall asleep.  I realized that I had set Jude up to have sleep issues when all I thought was that these things were in his best interest. 

First, Jude wanted to nurse before going to sleep.  He would latch on and his eyes would roll into the back of his head in pure bliss.  As soon as the sucking stopped, I would lay him down.  His eyes would shoot open and he would wail.  To replace my boob, I would put a pacifier in his mouth, which would suffice, and his eyes would roll back again.  Then, I would place his lovey in his hands and he would roll to his side and fall asleep.  Then, I would turn on his mobile that played classical music for twenty minutes and he would be out.  This was all well and good except for the fact that once the music shut off or the pacifier would pop out of his mouth or he realized that my boob was nowhere to be found, it was all over.  Sometimes this was two hours later, sometimes two minutes.  Oy ve.

Long story short, the NCSS did not work for us.  We tried diligently for a month.  The only thing that improved was that Jude started to sleep a longer stretch in the beginning of the night.  He went from waking up within the first hour to sleep for 3-4 hours and then waking up every 1-2 after that.

People with good intentions had all sorts of suggestions for us.  "You just need to shut off the baby monitor for a couple of nights so he can cry it out all night", "You need to stop spoiling him so much by carrying him around all day so that at night, he thinks he needs to be held then too", "Stop breastfeeding him and give him formula, you shouldn't breastfeed once they have teeth", "Put some cereal in a bottle and send him to bed with it".  Again, not judging what other parents have done because we all make parenting choices that are best for our own family, however, none of the suggestions people had to offer felt 'right' in regards to what would work for Jude. Therefore, I resigned myself to multiple night wakings until toddlerdom.

So this post doesn't turn into a full blown novella, I'm going to try to speed things up.  I decided to read Ferber's book, "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems".  The most I knew about Ferber was that his methods were associated mostly with 'crying it out', but someone told me that if for no other reason, pick up his book to read about all the information he has on infant sleep cycles and sleep associations.  So I did. 

Upon first picking up the book, I was surprised to see that he runs the Harvard Institue of Pediatric Sleep Disorders.  Okay, totally giving this guy a chance, he probably knows a bit about what he is talking about.  Holy moly.  I was floored reading about all of the cycles babies go through and that night waking is a necessity, ESPECIALLY in the early months since that is a main prevention of SIDS.  If a baby is sleeping TOO soundly and in a sleep cycle that is difficult to get out of, they can stop breathing.  It was nice to read an affirmation that an early infant sleeping through the night just didn't sound right to me.  Maybe Jude was more normal than abnormal.  Also, I didn't know that Ferber doesn't call for straight crying it out, but rather letting a child cry in intervals and then going in to check on him so he doesn't believe he was abandoned.  Ferber first states that you need to create the child's sleep environment into a sleep association- free environment.  The reasoning behind this makes sense:  because of the way a baby's sleep cycle is set up, they go through the multiple stages of sleep in shorter intervals than adults and have brief periods of waking.  Upon these periods of waking, adults are able to fall right back to sleep if everything is the same as when they fell asleep.  But say that you go through the brief wake period and sense that a light is on in the hallway that wasn't on when you fell asleep, you are instantly fully awake and investigate.  Same as a baby.  If Jude fell asleep with a pacifier in his mouth, with his music on holding his lovey and when he hits his wake cycle with the paci out of his mouth, music off and his lovey nowhere to be found, he is instantly awake because he feels he "needs" all three of these in order to go back to sleep.

Okay.  Get rid of sleep assocations.  We stopped with the music.  I nursed him before story time instead of right before bed.  I did lay him down with his lovey, but if he wakes up, he can easily find that so I didn't think that was an issue.  I also made sure to leave the room while he was still awake, without rubbing his back or anything since that would also be another sleep assocation.  It worked!  Well, for a few hours.  Basically, Jude would sleep from 7:30ish until about 11, wake up and want to nurse, nurse, nurse until it was time to get up at 5:30.

Cutting to a different topic that I think is the missing piece to the whole sleep mystery.  I think I'm starting to develop milk supply issues.  While Jude is at daycare every day, I pump 3-4 times a day at work to send breastmilk with him the next day.  I've been pretty proud of myself that Jude is almost 9.5 months and I'm still able to give him breastmilk 24/7.  (And it saves so much money!)  These past few weeks, I've gone from being able to pump about 16-20 oz in a day, and it has tanked to being able to pump 10-12.  I've done everything in an attempt to get it back up, I'm an expert.  No dice.  More to come another time.  By the time evening rolls around, I don't produce much since prolactin levels are the lowest in a body at that time.  I now believe that at least half of the issue is that Jude is seriously hungry in the middle of the night and since he isn't getting much milk before bed, he wakes up very often to "top himself off".

The last week or so, I've been giving him a 6 oz bottle of milk before bed and then I pump after he goes to bed.  This, combined with getting rid of his sleep associations has provided the breakthrough we so desperately needed.

Two days ago, I put little boy to bed at 7:15.  He briefly woke at 8, I settled him back down and he didn't wake up until 5:30 am.  WHAT?!?!  Of course, that didn't mean I got any sleep.  I was checking on him hourly convinced that something was horribly wrong.

Last night, he went to bed at 7:30.  Woke up briefly at 11:15 and settled himself back down and woke up at 4:30 am and I was able to settle him down again.  Not as great as the night before, but a SERIOUS, SERIOUS improvement.

I hope the trend lasts and that I didn't completely ruin things by talking about them.  I attribute this success to my education of sleep cycles for babies, getting rid of *most* of Jude's sleep associations, realizing my milk supply is starting to tank and finding alternatives for evening feedings, and the fact that Jude has cut 6 teeth in the two previous months and he is no longer waking up because of teething pain.

If you've made it this far, you're awesome.  I mostly just wanted to record our sleep story (so far, as the issue is clearly tumultuous) so I can show Jude someday just how much he put us through when I tell him he can't stay out all night - my sleepless nights thanks to him are in the beginning only.