Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream

I used to be a big fan of routines and schedules. But over the past few years, I’ve gradually slid into chaos. I get up each morning and take things as they come. If I am feeling energetic, we are off and running. If I’m too tired to do what has been planned for the day, we don’t do it. If I’m too stressed to cook dinner, I order take-out. I am completely spoiled — I might go so far as to say selfish. Selfish in the sense that I do what I want to do and don’t always consider what might be best for the entire family for the long run.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a self-improvement junkie. I love to read self-help articles and make plans, but I usually don’t follow through. This is my big goal right now - the follow-through. Following through when I tell my son “no,” following through when my daughter should be sleeping and she wants to nurse for the 15th time that day, following through when it’s time to go to the gym, following through when it’s time to cook a decent meal. This slide into chaos has created an existence where I am sleep-deprived, my children have little in the way of routine or boundaries, and my husband and I have little quality time together.

I’m tackling the sleep issue first. I don’t do well on interrupted sleep and my daughter seems to thrive on it. Ask the “experts” how to get a 7 month old to stay asleep and you’ll get a pretty big variety of answers. There’s Ferber, Sears, Brazelton, cry-it-out, no-cry, co-sleeping… Bottom line? Experiment and do what works for you and your child. C rarely sleeps for more than an hour at a time during the day and will take 2 or 3 naps with no real scheduled nap time. At night, she’ll sleep for 11 or 12 hours, waking at various times. Some nights she’ll sleep 6 -7 hours, other nights she’s up every 2 hours. While she seems to be getting the “hours needed,” I don’t feel she is getting good, restorative sleep at night. She’s cranky a lot during the day.

What have I tried so far? Since I lean toward taking the easy way out, I’ve tried sleeping with her and I’ve tried simply attending to her needs (translation: nursing her back to sleep). Sleeping with her did not work. She would wake and get excited to see me there and want to play. I’d pretend to be asleep and she’d grab my nose and kick her feet and laugh. Nursing her back to sleep worked well - and quickly - but is not a real solution. I’m just training her to rely on nursing to get to sleep.

Last night, I began my next experiment. When she wakes I am going to cuddle with her, but not nurse (unless it’s been like 6 hours since her last feeding). Whew - was she pissed! How DARE you pick me up in the middle of the night and NOT NURSE ME! She squirmed and thrashed in my arms. (And she’s 22 pounds - not a light baby to be walking and bouncing around!) I finally sat in the rocking chair and pretty much pinned her against me and just held tight. She calmed down after a while and fell asleep. She woke up 2 more times that night, and I nursed her both times. When you’re in a sleep fog, it’s sometimes hard to remember what time she nursed last. How many hours has it been? What’s 4 minus 2? But I think I’m off to a good start. Hopefully we’ll both soon be “sleeping like a baby” (where did that phrase come from?).