Sleeping Solutions

It seems like no matter how late it is I need to read to get myself to sleep. I'm not sure when this started, but it seems to be pretty ingrained. Last night I went to bed and realized I'd finished my book, so I pulled out The Attachment Parenting Book by Dr. Sears. I'm a fan of Dr. Sears approach to parenting and feel like I have a pretty good idea about his methods from the other books I've read of his, but this had better insight into the whole co-sleeping thing.

Somewhere along the way I decided that co-sleeping was over. It was getting more difficult to keep Charlotte asleep at night with me so close by because she wanted to keep nursing. To make matters more difficult she'd wake up whenever the hall light would shine under our bedroom door. So we decided to set up her crib hoping that if she wasn't so close to me she'd sleep better. We moved her a couple months ago and it has yet to be better. If anything it's worse.

I was so baffled by this thinking that a baby this old should easily be able to sleep in a crib on her own. I would have continued to try to keep her in her crib if I hadn't read the chapter on co-sleeping last night. I was reminded that if something isn't working you should change it. I'm willing to admit now that sleeping in the crib isn't working. I was resistant to having her back in our bed because I wake up every hour to feed her. When I really think about it, she wakes up every hour or two in her crib anyway. At least if she's in bed with me I don't have to get up and she goes back to sleep without any trouble.

Sleeping methods work different for every family but I think we should probably go back to this one. There are lots of different opinions on sharing your bed. For me, I do it to maintain my sanity! There are also ideas floating out there that it helps baby feel more secure early on and thus more secure and trusting of their parents as they get older. I'm not sure how much of this is really measurable, but it sounds good to me anyway.

Perhaps the crib will work out later on, and I'm starting to think that perhaps we moved her too soon. It should have been pretty obvious to me when she'd scream in her crib and immediately stop and nuzzle into my neck the second I picked her back up again. So I'm going to listen to what my baby wants because she is still my baby after all and it won't be long before she doesn't want to sleep with me let alone nuzzle!

Sleepocolypse 2012

A few nights ago Charlotte slept for 6 uninterrupted hours. We both woke up and thought for sure that my mom or someone had fed her and put her back to sleep, but she had slept the whole time. I thought this might be a turning point. Perhaps we had finally reached a happy place where we could all finally sleep! She is almost 9 months old after all, this should have been the case awhile ago.

Sadly the next night she was up all night with a fever. I took her to her pediatrician who told us she had a sore throat and we just had to wait it out. We managed to survive the nights by taking sleep shifts with her. She wouldn't sleep unless she was being held.

Yesterday her fever had broken and she seemed to be much happier. I figured that since she was feeling better she could sleep in her crib - I don't want her getting into the habit of thinking she needs to be held the entire time she sleeps. I managed to get her down around 10:30 and got her in her crib at 11. Surely this was success! We went to bed and sure enough, she woke up around 1. I went out to nurse her right away thinking it would calm her back to sleep and I could put her in her crib. Not so. She would relax and doze the second I picked her up, but the second I even started to put her down she'd start screaming. And this isn't just your run of the mill grunting snorting protest, this is full on ear-piercing shrieking like I'm stabbing her in the leg with a knife screaming.

After about 30 minutes of picking her up to calm her down and then putting her back down again, I finally couldn't take it anymore. When someone screams in my face, no matter who they are, it starts to fray my nerves. I decided to let her scream it out. Surely then she'd wear herself out and sleep on her own. The problem is that this kid doesn't give up. After about 40 minutes of shrieking at the top of her lungs I tried sleeping with her. Eventually Paul had to go deal with her because I'm apparently a milk cow and this is very distracting when you're a baby trying to sleep.

Charlottes well baby visit is in about two weeks. Hopefully I can discuss her issues then. I wish that nights like we had last night were just because she's been sick, but my going to bed well after 2am after hours of struggling to get her to sleep is pretty normal. Its especially frustrating when I hear other moms say that their babies sleep not just through the night, but for 10 or 11 hours! What is wrong with my child that I can't get her to do this?!

I was warned when I was pregnant that I would lose sleep. I just had no idea it would be this ridiculous.

Double Life

Today was a very busy day and it's starting to feel like more of my days are getting to be compartmentalized and tightly scheduled. I started with Zumba, headed to the new mom's group at Andaluz, met my mom and her friend Camilla at Starbucks, came home, napped, and then drove out to Lewis and Clark for a 3 hour rehearsal.

I like keeping busy and I think the exercise is really giving me the energy I need to handle it. I just wish my sleep was keeping up with it too (blogging late at night probably isn't helping). The rest of my week is really just as busy. I added another day to my teaching schedule since I have new students now, I have two more rehearsals and a concert Saturday, and I'm sure I'm going to try to squeeze some more time in at the gym. I think when spring break hits, I'm going to try to keep my schedule empty and enjoy my time at home!

With all this busy I think I've found my threshold in terms of how much I want to be separated from my baby. I found myself missing her as I was driving out to rehearsal tonight and was happy to see her again when I got home. What I found to be even more strange was some of the weird feelings I had at rehearsal.

This concert is one where I get to sing with many friends and colleagues that I have sung with over the last several years. It was really nice to see their faces and I haven't seen many of them since before I got pregnant. I felt like I'd been on this really long journey and had returned back to my hometown full of people that had been there the whole time I was gone. It felt good to jump back in to the choral world and even better to be able to tread water on such a mentally engaging piece. Returning home to a baby that wanted to be nursed in a dark house full of people made me feel even more like I'm living a life in two different worlds. I think I like it though. I get to feel like I have the best secret!