I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

So...as you may have guessed from the title of this post, Jude moved into a crib in his own room recently. We took the plunge two weeks ago. It's been the hardest thing I've done since he was born.

Until we moved him, Jude had fantastic sleeping habits for his age. As a newborn we had him sleep in our room in his carseat. We'd gotten the tip from friends, who said it had worked well for their newborn, and we could tell he liked being propped up slightly and surrounded by the wooly lining. (Since then we've learned of some risks with letting newborns sleep for long periods in their carseats, so we don't recommend it.) From his first week on he routinely slept six hours straight in that thing and I only had to get up once a night to feed him.

I knew I had to transition him, and soon. You can't have a five-year old putting his footy pajamas on and squeezing himself into an infant carseat before getting up for kindergarten the next morning. Our carseat friends had told us it took them only one sleepless night to transition their son. That sounded easy enough. I thought, "I can swing that."

Like I knew what I was talking about.

Two weeks later, I'll just say our son is a bit more stubborn than this other saintly child. (No halo around Jude's little head - although the hair sticking up on top is better than a halo in my opinion. But that's beside the point.) We can't believe how little sleep he can run on. We keep reading that at this age babies tend to sleep 15 hours a day. Jude? Try eight. On a good day. Parenting books are no help in this department. They gleefully report things like: "Babies sleep all day and all night and only wake up to eat or have their diaper changed!!" Ha ha. That's great.

During the first week he went down pretty easily and would usually sleep for a two-hour block, during which I would go to bed. This sounds quaint so far. But within the first 30 minutes of my head hitting the pillow I could expect to be up again. This was followed by four or five hours of waking every 15 - 30 minutes. All...night....long. By 6:00 am I would finally cave and bring him into bed with us. He would sleep like a brick then.

On the fifth night or so of this we tried letting him "cry it out" on advice I'd heard from parents who'd reached the end of their rope, but I could only last five minutes. It was pathetic hearing a little baby get more and more upset, and I couldn't handle it. When Jono went to get him finally his crib sheets were wet. From his tears :(

So we tried everything else we could think of. Making his room nice and warm with an oil heater. White noise from the humidifier. Soft music playing. A crib mobile. Complete darkness. Feeding every three hours through the night. Hovering over him in his crib rather than picking him up to soothe him so he wouldn't be so dependent on us for sleep. Nothing was working.

I called my mom. I was hesitant and afraid, but she juiced me up. It was just what I needed to do what had to be done. I HAD TO LET HIM CRY.

I was thinking he was too young to "cry it out', and some claim an infant can't self-soothe, but I was a desperate zombie by this point and was willing to try it. He needed to learn to go back to sleep without me hovering over him every 15 minutes. Mom said, "It's the best thing for both of you. No one is sleeping, and it isn't good for you or for Jude." Jono said, "Em, we need to do a little 'detachment parenting'."

So I tried it. This sounds terrible (I can't believe I did it), but I let him cry for over an hour two different times throughout the night. I made sure that he'd recently been fed when I did this so that he wasn't crying from hunger. I actually managed to sleep through most of it, which shows how bone-tired I was. He eventually went to sleep on his own after the second crying jag, which was the point. Man, he is stubborn.

When I went to him in the morning I was terrified he would resent me for doing this. Had I messed up my best efforts so far at healthy attachment? Did his stress levels rise so high from crying so long that he now had emotional damage? (I read something about that in an attachment parenting magazine!) Were some of those AP people out to lunch on some of these things, or was I?

As I snuck up on him in his crib, I saw that he was awake and playing by himself. He was sucking on his fists, staring at his mobile, and making adorable sounds. After watching for awhile I picked him up. Jono came in and offered to change his diaper (read: good marriage choice). I watched him getting his bum wiped on his changing table, as I often do, because he is so happy and cute when getting his diaper changed. I caught his eye once and silently begged forgiveness. He gave me a big smile. No hard feelings Mom.

Since that night he's gotten into a pattern of waking and feeding every two to three hours, and I still bring him into bed with us for his last night-time feeding around 6am. This is still a lot of waking for an 11-week-old, but it's so much better than it was last week. Now we can try some other, less traumatic tactics for getting him to sleep for longer periods as he gets older. I have no real expectations for him to "sleep through the night" right now. I suppose he'll get there when he's ready.

Even though it was effective, I still feel guilty about the night I let him cry. The next day his voice was scratchy, and it still hasn't come back all the way. This makes me feel worse. Yesterday he opened his mouth to coo at me, and he thought he was making a sound, but he wasn't :( Today I noticed the coo was back. It's one of the best sounds in the world.

Tough love starts early I guess. Here's to second guessing myself for the rest of my life.

Sorry about the novel. I haven't actually been writing much, so maybe it's okay that I just posted a mini manifesto on a baby's sleeping habits. Out of necessity, I'm a little obsessed right now.