...my little one throws me a curve ball.  Two out of the last 3 nights he has slept for 7 hours straight, no crying it out necessary.  Now to some of you this may not seem like a big deal, but to my husband and I, this is the definition of bliss.  Seven whole hours.  I didn't need quite as much concealer today.  What did I do differently?  Basically, what everyone tells me not to do...  

Last week, out of pure and utter desperation, I bought "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems", by Dr. Richard Ferber.  A friend of mine, who had similar sleep issues with her children, recommended the book to me and told me that it took 3 nights to get her kids to sleep through the night.  B had been sleeping 2-3 hour stretches at night and I was paying the price during the day.  I was tired, groggy, agitated, foggy, and starting to get depressed.  Every time I would hear a friend tell me how their baby slept 10 hours a night (straight) I would quite literally, start to cry.  What is wrong with my baby?  Why won't he sleep?  How can he function all day without sleep?  Will it be like this forever?  What am I doing wrong???

Back to the book, I started reading it on the train and before bed.  I gathered some interesting information that I had never thought of before.  All babies have multiple waking during the night.  The problem comes in when the baby cannot self-soothe back to sleep.  Thus, B's issue.  He wakes up and gets so upset that he can't fall back to sleep.  The book recommends the let the baby fuss 5 minutes, go and check on them (without any skin contact) and then leave.  Wait 7 minutes and then do the same.  You just keep making the check-ins farther and farther between until your baby falls asleep on his/her own.  Also, you are not supposed to give them a pacifier (or at least not replace it if it falls out) and you are not supposed to nurse them before bed or during the night.  It isn't straight CIO, but a modified form of it.  How hard could that be, right?  We decided to give it a try.  Desperation speaks...loudly.

Oh man.  I know that being sleep deprived sucks, but listening to your baby cry and seeing the baby tears is awful.  I think I'd almost rather gouge my eyeballs out than listen to that awful cry.  They say that CIO is worse for the parents than it is for the child, but I don't know, B was really upset.  The first night that we tried it totally sucked and most likely backfired because he slept worse than his normal 2-3 hours at a time.  Seeing me check in on him made him even more upset.  He had started to develop a cold and was teething so I decided that night wasn't the night to start "Ferberizing".  By the time I picked him up snot and tears were streaming down his face.  Bad mommy.  :-(

Well the next night his cold got worse and his sleep got worse, too.  He cried and wouldn't let up.  Upon giving in and picking him up, I noticed that his top left tooth had cut through his red little gums.  Poor baby.  I felt like a jerk for making him cry for so long.  I am sure he was crying because he was in pain, not because he was being a difficult baby.  Bad mommy.  :-(

I decided to table the "Ferberizing" for the time being and try a few different things that I am more comfortable with for the time being.  First of all, I started completing his whole night time routine in his room, rather than my room.  After his bath, I now read to him in his room, nurse him in his room, and then rock him to sleep to the soothing noise of the  sound machine (I can just imagine the eye rolls).  If he gets up at night, I let him fuss for a few minutes (twice he has fallen back to sleep), then I go get him.  I offer him snuggles first, if that doesn't work then a pacifier, and if that doesn't work then a boob. I realized that I actually like this routine because I work all day and this is the most quality time that I get with him.  I want to soak it up.  He won't be a baby forever.  He won't let me snuggle him forever.  He won't be nursing forever.  You get where I am going with this?

The past few nights our routine has gone as described above and I can tell you that my stress level has been much lower.  Oh and two out of the three nights the little man has slept 7 hours straight.  Last night he didn't even sleep in our bed at all.  He has cut nursing at night down to one time or less.  Maybe this is a fluke that will last just a few days or maybe he still needs a little more of his mommy at night.  I don't think that is the worst thing in the world.  ;-)

As I write this, I am going on about 5 1/2 months of less than 5 hours of a sleep at a time, so I apologize in advance for grammar/spelling errors and the fact that this post might be all over the place.  The lack of sleep is starting to affect my quality of life.  I forget things, I get agitated easily, I do stupid/careless things, I mess up at work and I am tired and hungry all the time.  The other day I scheduled a meeting (booked the conference room) and forgot to actually invite people to it.  I was sitting in the room by myself when I realized that I didn't invite anyone.  Face.  Palm.

My 5 1/2 month old son, who is the size of a 1 year old (for real), has decided that sleeping is not very high up on his list of his priorities.  He doesn't sleep at night and he doesn't do anything more than take small 20-30 minute cat naps throughout the day.  Lately, his pattern has been as follows:

6:30 PM - Bath
6:50 PM - Book
7:10 PM - Nurse, side lying
7:15 PM to 7:45 PM - Either lay with him in our bed until he falls asleep then transport to his crib or pick up put down in his crib.  He kicks and thrashes until he finally passes out.
8 PM to 11 PM - Sleep, B
9:30 PM - I go to sleep
11 PM - B wakes up to nurse, side lying
11:15 PM to 1 AM - Sleep, B (my husband puts him back in his crib)
1 AM - Attempt giving B pacifier in his crib, fails
1:15 AM - Nurse, side lying until we both fall asleep in our bed
1:20 AM to 3 AM - Sleep, B
3 AM - B wakes up, give him pacifier
4:40 AM - I wake up to get ready for work, B sleeps with Dad
5:40 AM - Wake B up to nurse before I leave

Things that I know I am doing wrong:

1.  Co-sleeping.  My husband and I swore up and down that we would not co-sleep.  That was until I found out about how real the effects of sleep deprivation are on a person.  We didn't want to co-sleep because we didn't want to be that couple that can't have sex because the kid is in bed with us.  I didn't really even take into consideration the risk of suffocation/SIDs, which I was reminded of the other day that I am a shitty parent for letting B sleep in our bed.  The only real reason that we started co-sleeping was because when I nurse the baby at night, in bed, we both fall asleep.  I am working/commuting daily from 6:30 AM until 4:30 PM.  I need some sleep.  The only way I get any at all is if I nurse while lying down.  I feel like we need to take a "vacation" from work to train him to sleep.

2.  Letting him lay with me to fall asleep.  After nursing him before bed, I lay with him on most occasions and hold down his arms because he bats them up and down like a wild animal.  Pinning them down does help him fall asleep faster, but I know the we need to let him learn to comfort himself.

The other night I put him down in his crib at bedtime, turned on his B.aby E.instein Fishy Music Box and attempted to let him put himself to sleep as I watched on the baby monitor.  Little B decided to flip onto his stomach and proceed to pivot so much that both of his legs became stuck in the crib slats.  By the time I came upstairs to rescue him, he was so flipped out that he was flailing and banging his head on his mattress while crying to the point that he could barely catch his breath.  So yeah, that was an epic failure.  I had to rock him for 20 minutes so that he could calm down enough to fall asleep again.

The past two nights he has been sick.  He developed a stuffy nose, watery eyes, sneezing and twice he has vomited (they told me I would know the difference from spitting up and vomiting and I didn't really believe them, but now I do).  He hasn't has a fever, though.  The poor babe has trouble eating or sucking on his pacifier because he can't breathe out of his nose.  We gave up on any type of sleep conditioning (training seems to be too controversial of a word these days) until he is better.  The past two nights, I have gotten a combined 7 hours of broken sleep.  Not good my friends, not good.

I have asked advice from several friends and family members and their responses for what I should do range from total CIO (cry it out) to attending to baby's every cry so that they keep trust in you (how they know that baby trust is associated with letting them cry to sleep is beyond me).  Usually people who are adamantly against CIO are very passionate about it, but the opposite is also true.  My mom is very passionately for CIO and claims that it worked for all of us and that none of us had serious attachment issues.  She is right.  We all slept through the night at early ages and were breastfed (I always get "give him cereal in his bottle and he'll sleep longer"...ummm no thanks).  We were also made to CIO at early ages.  My mom said it took 2-3 nights before we were able to "self-soothe".  She mentioned that it wasn't easy to listen to us cry and that she cried, too, but it was worth it.

Findings from a Temple University study that came out late last year, suggest that leaving babies to CIO is not harmful to them and helps them learn how to sleep on their own.  This NY Daily News article sums up the study.  Honestly, I am not sure how much actual scientific research they are using here to make that claim because, even after researching, I can't find the actual published study results.  I think that this method most definitely makes it better for the parents quality of life and many times a happy mommy/daddy equals a happy baby.  I am not sure that they went into disproving that it can cause psychological issues later in life, I think they just set to prove out that letting babies cry it out helps them to sleep better.

I belong to a FB group of mothers who miscarried babies that were due in April 2012.  Members of the group have left because their views on the topic caused major verbal arguments.  A few of them said it bothered them so much to hear about others abandoning their babies at night that it made them cry.  Drama, much?

An article in Psychology Today, Dangers of “Crying It Out”,  backs up the claim that children are generally damaged when being left to CIO. In summation, the article states that babies that are left to cry are more likely to have higher levels of stress and anxiety, lower self-confidence and less trust of others and the world around them.  The article even claims that the caregivers can become desensitized.  Read the comments after the article if you want to see fireworks.

I don't really feel passionate about any type of sleep conditioning.  You should parent your child as you see fit.  Everyone is going to have different views on exactly what should be done.  I don't know why people have to get so up in arms about how other people get their kids to sleep at night.  I personally don't want to give my baby cereal or formula to help them sleep at night.  If you want to, that's fine.  I hope it works out well for you.  I won't judge you, so you don't judge me, please!    

I don't think I will every be able to completely let B cry it out unless I get completely desperate.  I have been researching hybrid types of sleep conditioning, which I hope might be able to work for us.  Stay tuned, hopefully I can come up with the magic bullet.  Until then, I am going to continuing walking around in a sleepy, foggy haze.