I have slept less than 3 hours in a stretch for over 6 months and while I would like to think that I am handing it remarkably well, it can't be good to be chronically sleep deprived.
I have read advice from "pat your child when then wake and gently tell them that they can eat in the morning and help them to fall back asleep" - um...clearly these "gentle patters" have never had a baby who wakes and cries and wont go back to sleep until he gets what he wants - a midnight trip to the milk bar.
I have read that you just have to let them cry...I can't stomach it. Even chronic sleep deprivation doesn't win when I hear my baby cry and I know that I can fix it with a quick feeding.
I keep hoping that he will just suddenly start sleeping thru the night on his own. And there are glimpses of this. The nights were I go to bed at 10pm and he has his last feeding then and then he wakes to eat at 1am and at 5am and then wakes for the day at 7. These are the good nights - where I think that we are making progress.
But then for every night that I think we are almost there, there are nights like last night and the night before where he wakes to eat at 11:30pm, 1:00am, 2:30am, 3:40am, 5:00am and 6:50am. And the only thing that will get him to go back to sleep is to feed him. It's like having a newborn infant again. And these nights happen much more than the good 2 night waking nights.
I haven't figured out what the magical answer is, but I definitely have goals in mind.
- Get Bear to sleep with only 1 night waking
- Get one solid 6 hour stretch of sleep for both of us
- Move bear into his crib next to our bed for night time sleeping
I don't mind waking up in the middle of the night - it is the every 1-3 hours that get me. I am pretty sure I never hit a deep sleep pattern with all of this waking up.
Bear is a very good baby and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to be a parent. He has the biggest smiles and cries when tired or when he has gas that gets stuck but otherwise, he is very well adjusted and he just melts my heart. But when we are on our second, third, fourth, fifth night of waking in the middle of the night 5 or more times, it wears on you. I am mostly worn down in the middle of the night but then the morning comes and he smiles sweetly and everything is forgotten.
I didn't ever consider the idea that I would still be waking like I had a newborn at almost 7 months old. I really need to figure out this whole sleeping thing. I will keep you updated along the way and let you know how things are playing out.
1 comment:
I have 2 things to tell you:
One is that I have not slept for longer than a 3 hour stretch in 6 months because I have to pee at least every 3 hours ;-) There are nights when I'm up 4 times. I don't understand the pregnant people who tell me they always have to get up once a night and it's annoying, I would kill for ONCE!
Second is that you don't actually need a long stretch of time to get a good night's sleep, sleeping for 8 hours a night in one go is actually a cultural/society thing. Evolutionarily we're better designed to sleep for 3-4 hours, then get up, stoke the fire (cause I'm talking cave people here) or have sex or chat and then sleep for another 3-4 hours. Equaling the 8 hours roughly still, but broken up and not all at once. This is also why so many people are plagued with insomnia at 2-3am and can't go back to sleep! Just food for thought!
Good luck with the night time weaning! Has he started on solids yet? Solids should fill him up for longer than breast milk, so as you move into more solid food he may naturally stop needing so much at night!
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