Intrepid Murmurings

Oh lord, I am feeling really run down.

Nighttime sleep with the babies has reached critical stages.  Something must be done, and I am dreading it.  Basically, at 4 months old they still won't sleep at night unless on me, boob in mouth (daytime is another story, oddly).  For awhile things were getting better in this regard but now its worse than its ever been.  They won't go down at night unless I am there, nursing them.  If I set them down, the cry. If Lonnie holds them or tries to get them to sleep, they cry.  If we are able to transfer them to the Amby, they sleep for 20-30 min and then cry.

The general schedule is that they sleep & doze on me from 8-10, while I read or do internet stuff, then on a good day they sleep on me from 10-12, nurse, sleep from 12:45-2, and then are dosing and nursing from 2-5, when Emma wakes us all up and we are up for the day.  On bad days, it is pretty much wakeups every hour all night long, with them mostly awake from 2-5.  Lonnie usually leaves around 5:50 for work.   I think I am getting about 5 hours of extremely interrupted sleep and am so exhausted I can barely see straight.   Man, I could kill for those newborn months when they were actually sleeping for 3-4 hour stretches. 

During the day, naps are erratic, but when they happen, they are generally good.  Then, too, they HAVE to nurse to sleep (or be in a carrier/the car), but they transfer like a dream and sleep 2-3 hours at a time.  Some days they definitely sleep more during the day than at night.  Of course, it is rarely at the same time, so I don't get a chance to nap at all.  

I have been trying to break the nurse to sleep habit by tanking them up with bottles, singing, bouncing, rocking, holding, cramming pacifiers in their mouths (no luck), setting them in their beds sleepy but awake (ha!), but after 3-4 hours of fussing/whining/screaming babies I just give in.  2 minutes later they are out.

I do intend to do some sleep training this weekend (I have to wait until Fri so Lonnie doesn't need to go to work the next day without sleep) and basically I am going let them still cosleep in our bed but just lie next to me, not nurse.  They are going to scream their heads off, and I hate that.  Still, I just don't feel comfortable letting them scream in their own beds/room alone, and I do LIKE cosleeping in general (because it is much easier to do night feedings).   

I am fairly certain that while some of these issues are temperament/personality based (seriously, all three of these girls have a freakin' strong opinions about things!) some is also due to my low milk supply, and the early need to keep them nursing as much and as frequently as possible.  It was pretty much the same with Emma, and I know several other low supply mamas in the same boat.  I wouldn't trade not nursing for good sleep, though, and wouldn't change a thing even in hindsight (other than maybe pushing the pacifiers more).  

On top of all this Emma is sick with a really bad cold and couldn't go to daycare today.  Boo!  I count on those two mornings a week to work on sleep with the babies and get stuff done around the house but today it was just a madhouse all morning.  I finally but Emma to bed at noon, an hour early, because I couldn't handle it any more.   2/3 are currently sleeping, and I think I will try now to grab some lunch and then take Delia to bed and get her to sleep a little with me so I can nap.  There are a million things I'd rather do but I really need it!

Its 3pm, and none of my 3 (!) children have napped yet today.  WTF?  Well, Delia slept in the carseat at the park for about 20 min but other than that....nada.  It is just impossible to coddle 3 kids to sleep every day so here we are.  

Luckily, I think Emma may be asleep or close to it upstairs with a book on tape.  But Elsie and Delia are screaming their heads off in the glider and swing and I refuse to do any more bouncing/nursing/walking with them.  Enough!  If they are still crying in 30 min I suppose I will try again.  

But aren't 3 month olds supposed to sleep every 2 hours or something like that?  They used to sleep the day away (when I let them sleep on me, that is).  I know they are full, too, because they both just downed 4 oz bottles....

I had to report this to have it in writing that it actually happened.  

Tonight, as he has for the past three, Lonnie put Emma to bed (hence no nursing -- I promise a weaning post soon!).  They read books and such, and she had some soy milk in a cup, and was asking for more, so he came down to get it.  Soon after that, she needed a diaper change (she often is adament about changing as soon as she pees these days) so they came down for that.  He asked her where she wanted to sleep, upstairs where she usually does, in our crib/bed combo, or downstairs in the guest bed that is in her room (where I have been sleeping often, lately).  She wanted to sleep downstairs.  He laid down with her, she wanted a hug, and then she told him "go!".  As in, get out of here, Daddy, I am going to sleep now.

HOLY MOLEY!  Is this our child? He closed the door and we have not looked in yet, but she hasn't let out a peep and I am going to soon.  That bed is high, and there is no bed rail, which makes me a tinge nervous.  I have been plotting getting a new, lower platform type bed for her in there, big enough that an adult can join her if need be, and I think that may be in the works.  Seriously, this is a shocking development.  And I am not counting on a repeat, but I can't help but think about it.....

Oh, sleep.  How many posts can I write about this topic, anyway?  Yesterday, I posted on a local LLL Toddler mailing list about our current issues.  It is feeling like we are getting to crisis mode, for me at least, some of the time.  Nightweaning is not really doing the trick. 

"Right now, our issues with sleep and breastfeeding are so entertwined  I am not sure what to do with either. She has always been a hugely  difficult sleeper -- mostly just not sleeping much, and hard to get  down when she does. She nurses to sleep about 90% of the time,  though also falls asleep with her Daddy or in the car pretty well.  We attempted (and are still) nightweaning more than a month ago, to  slight success. She sleeps now from about 8pm-3am without waking  much, or if she does, she is able to resettle. From 3-4:30am, she is   often awake and screaming (sometimes with a few episodes of dozing).  This happens pretty much every night -- she usually won't accept  water or a snack. 4:30 is our deemed "wake up" time where her night  light on a timer pops on, and it is then okay to nurse. She nurses  for about 30-45 minutes, or until I cannot handle it any longer.  Often she sleeps for another 1-2 hours, sometimes we are up for the  day."

So, yeah, today was one of those days.  She woke at 3:45, and since we had actually decided to revert to an earlier nursing time, she only had to wait 10 minutes or so.  Then she nursed for about an hour, off and on, then accepted a water and snack, chatted with Daddy who was up to say goodbye (he gets up at the ungodly hour of 4, these days), played around in the bed while I tried to sleep, and finally started screaming and biting me around 5:45, when we got up.   Here's some more of my post from yesterday:

 "Naps are our second nurse/sleep struggle of the day. On a good day,  she gets in one 40 minute nap a day. Most days it is more like 30  minutes, or none at all. She gets sleepy around 10am, and given  the right conditions will take her 30 min nap then, and then nothing  the rest of the day. Every afternoon I lie down with her for about an hour and a half (1-3 or 2-4ish) when she seems sleepy. We read some, nurse  some, and then I mostly try/pretend to sleep while she screams for another hour  or so (interspersed, sometimes, with playing on her own around the  room). She gets so hysterical she starts banging her head against  her crib (which is attached sidecar to our bed, where I am lying) or  starts chewing on her crib while screaming. Eventually, we get up  and go downstairs to play or have a snack."

Sound like a slightly unhealthy nursing relationship, much?  Earlier in the post, I did mention that 75% of the time, nursing is still a good, happy thing between us.  I still firmly believe in the benefits of extended nursing (and cosleeping!), I find that nursing her during the day is great because its a great tool to calm the tantrums and defiance stuff we are getting into, and its one of the only things I can do with Emma where I can be lying down while it is happening!  Huge, right now!  Its just the sleep stuff that is really wearing thin, and unfortunately, thats a biggie. Maybe it is that my milk is drying up, and she can't fall asleep without more milk?  Or maybe there's some underlying allergy thing (she is back on dairy) that is messing with her sleep?  And there is always the cosleeping thing, though at this moment we don't even have a room we could put her in, if we did move her crib out.  Her room has the enormous guest bed in it, which generally one of us is sleeping in while the other deals with Emma in the night.  

"Basically, I am not getting enough sleep at all (even though I try to  sleep every second that she does -- its hard since I am up to pee 5  or so times a night!), and I imagine she isn't either (she will often  pass out nursing at 5 or 6 pm for a bit, only in arms, however). She  is screaming and begging for nursing for at least 3 hours a day,  during those early morning and afternoon hours. I feel like the baby  in utero is suffering because I am so damned tired, sick, and  stressed all the time, from lack of sleep and a proper diet. I feel  like Emma is obviously suffering from a lack of attention from me, or  something related to our nursing and sleep struggles. I think about  weaning daily, but am not sure it will do anything but get me even  less sleep and a lot more work (and guilt) -- she is obviously still needing it  for emotional reasons, at least..."

So, yeah, thats whats on my mind these days. Thinking a lot about what the heck we were thinking trying to space babies so closely when Emma is obviously so needy right now -- all the (kajillion) other moms I know who are also pregnant have toddlers that sleep at least 5-6 hours a day more than Emma.   I know in 6 months things will probably be a different ball game (I hope I hope!), but this being pregnant with her at this age and phase now is definitely bordering on the hardest thing I have ever done (the other being the whole breastfeeding struggles early on).   I am not sure what I am going to do, really, other than stick it out until we move, which will be sometime after the new year, if all goes well...

Yep!  Guess what I am going to talk about now?  Sleep!  Ha! 

So the sleep is going rather poorly again (still), and I find myself contemplating further action.  It seems that her sleep just cycles through tough times and better times, however, so it is definitely tempting to just ride it out.   I think it is very clear by now that 1)she is not an easy sleeper and 2) she does not need as much sleep as we might wish.  We have to keep reminding ourselves of these things.  I really don't think we can change them, at least the latter one, anyway. 

Lets start with the good -- she is going to sleep at night easier, and quicker.  She goes to sleep without nursing with Daddy quite often, and if we time it right (catching that window between 7-7:30 usually, when she is sleepy but not yet getting a second wind) she will fall asleep within 30 minutes.  We still have to stay with her to help her fall asleep, but we are fine with that. 

Nighttime sleep is sometimes okay (as in 2-3 brief wakeups) but more often not so great, with more like 6-8 or so.  I think this is partly teething -- she just got her first two molars in.  However, I am (again) seriously thinking of nightweaning.  I am encouraged by the fact that she can fall asleep so easily for Lonnie.  However, it is going to take a few hard nights, and since we still would prefer to cosleep, it means all of us will have to deal with it.  More on this in the near future, perhaps. 

And now, to the same old problem -- NAPS!  Still a huge issue!  She has now, like many of her peers, transitioned to one nap a day, instead of two.  However, unlike her peers, she is not consolidating sleep, just eliminating it -- her one nap is still 40 minutes long like clockwork.  She cannot make it through that one sleep cycle and on to the next, so she wakes up fully and is ready to play.  I know she could use more, because if we are in the car she will stir after that 40 minutes and then go back to sleep -- sometimes 3 times!  She has napped in the car for 3 hours, when it was moving.  Occasionally I can get her back for another 20 or so by getting up to her quickly and nursing her back down, but that is rare. 

Often her one nap is in the morning, too, so she is awake from 11 o'clock on, until her bedtime at 7:30.  That is a LONG stretch for her and for me!  She definitely gets pretty crabby by the end of the day, right, of course, when I am trying to fix dinner.  But that seems like a pretty universal issue with young kids, napping well or not.  She will often melt down, and if I nurse her then she will falls asleep at 5 or 6ish.  Right before dinner.  Lame!   This has pretty much been the routine now for 4-5 months, which is frustrating when I hear of others who has this 2-1 nap phase pass within a week or two.   Come on Emma, lets see some longer sleeping! 

One thing I have not tried, but am going to starting today, is to sneak up to her room after 35 minutes and lie down with her, so that when she wakes from the first sleep cycle, she can be comforted by my presence and maybe fall back to sleep.  I have read somewhere (The No Cry Sleep Solution, perhaps?) that you might initially have to nurse/comfort her back to sleep, but then just be there, and eventually she will learn to get through it herself.  Not counting on it, that is for sure, but I'll give it a shot.       

My only saving grace, and the reason I am still a sane person (mostly) is that Emma is becoming quite an independent player.  Hallaluia!  She can play with her various toys, wandering around the living room, climbing repeatedly on and off our bench and chair, pushing her carts and wagons around, moving her little poeple from here to there, for 45 minutes at a time, or longer!  It is pretty impressive.  Now, why haven't I gotten that to-do list completed, that is the question... 

So, I think everyone who is still reading here knows our many
struggles with sleep.  It is not always a pretty sight!  Basically,
Emma is not a huge fan of sleep, especially the process of falling to sleep or staying asleep for long.  Up until now she has been a very light sleeper who transfers poorly, and needs a lot of help getting to sleep in the first place.  Rocking, bouncing, wearing her in a sling, a bottle or, most often, breastfeeding, are what we tend to rely on, which is all fine by themselves, but even then our bedtime routine can be hours.  Same with naps.   By the time she is down, we are ready to sleep as well.  But then she wakes again.  Ha!

Things have been getting better, in some areas, however.  Hope is not lost!  She is sleeping more soundly at night, often transferring to the crib without complaint (occasionally even the car seat!), and sleeping for at least  one 4 hour stretch at night, sometimes more. Nighttime wakings have definitely reduced.

However, naps are a different beast, and often are not happening much at all.  The whole getting her to sleep thing is still extremely irregular, and often she exhibits signs of being Very Tired yet unable to get to sleep.  I really feel like something Needs To Be Done, but alas, what that is is somewhat a mystery.  A lot of folks we know have gone the Cry It Out route (though that means a variety of things to a variety of people) but leaving her  crying alone still does not feel right to us.  But what else to do? 

I had heard of someone from a local parenting support center (where my lactation consultant came from as well) who did consultations about parenting issues, mainly sleep.  So last week we called and booked a session. It is time.  It is time to get some sleep!  We talked with her about all sorts of things, describing what works and what doesn't, what we've tried and what we have not.  She asked a ton of questions about our routines, our room, about Emma's temperament (and ours) and gave us a lot of good tips and things to try.  She was very reassuring!  Here is a list of some things she suggested (definitely related to our specific situation, of course):

Changes in the sleep environment: Moving out the dog  to eliminate her sounds & movement, which can disturb sleep (not sure if we'll do that, she is pretty quiet, really).  Installing blackout shades. Adding a curtain to our stairwell dampen noise coming from downstairs.  And the biggie -- giving Emma her own space to sleep, instead of moving her between the crib & bed the way we have been doing (its okay to nap in a different place, however).  She mentioned that the main problem with wanting her to stay in the crib until we come to bed is that she cannot tell time.  Hmm.  Interesting.

For us, since we still want her in the room/cosleeping, it might be a mattress on the floor next to our bed, or taking a side off our crib and attaching it to our bed. That way we can still cuddle/comfort her and lie with her, if we want.  She can be reassured by our closeness,and I can breastfeed at night easily.  And it would be her dedicated space, she would always sleep there.     

Bedtime routine: Becoming much more consistent about getting dinner on the table earlier, 1-2 hours before bedtime (so probably on the table by 5:30, 6 tops).  Moving bedtime to a very consistent time, somewhere between 7-8pm. Paring down the bedtime routine to less than an hour.  Possibly eliminating the bath because it is stimulating and takes a long time, maybe introducing a family walk instead.  Talking through the routine, telling her everything that is going to happen, and reading stories about babies sleeping.  Also (eeks!) putting breastfeeding at the start of the routine, not the end. Ha!!!  Having both of us share/rotate putting her to bed or nighttime duties.  Finally, having both of us coming to bed at the same time later in the evening, to minimize distractions.

AM: Establishing a firm early wake-up time (5:30-6:30, when Daddy gets up) instead of lounging in bed nurse/dozing for several hours (drat, I have to set an alarm?!?)  Getting up earlier and eliminating that crappy sleep for both of us sleep should help with the earlier bedtime, as well as naps. 

The biggie:  There will most likely will be some sort of cry it out-ish thing with regards to not breastfeeding to sleep. That is going to be the hard one!  It will probably be us lying with her while she cries, or if our presence is making it worse, eventually leaving and coming to comfort every 5 min or however often we decide.  She also suggested trying to cut back to one nighttime feed instead of the current 2-3, and trying to push that first one  to 5 hours after the last one (currently it is more like 4).   Both of these nursing related things we are supposed to wait on until after a trip we are taking in a few weeks, and after she has mastered walking, since it is too much to be working on huge developmental things and sleep as well. 

Our Homework:  Writing up a plan, emailing it to her to review, sticking to it, and tweaking it as necessary.    

So, as you can see, not much focus on naps, darn it!  But she seemed to really think that by working on these other issues, the naps might take care of themselves (or we can live with short/less than ideal naps, if nighttime sleep is good).  She did mention several times that daytime and nighttime sleep are "different animals" and that nighttime sleep was more important to work on first.  Also that right now we are dealing with her moving from two naps to one which is going to take several months to work out. She suggested just trying/offering naps when she seems sleepy, no matter what time it is (which is what we have been doing).

Even though some of these things are stuff we have read/thought of, it was good to get an outside opinion and some new suggestions, as well.  For some reason (perhaps because I hate early mornings?) I really hadn't thought of moving up our wakeup time, which should help shift everything a few hours earlier.  Doh!  We tried it today and it really worked well!

Nap Regime 2007 is on hiatus. I stopped keeping track of the crib and nap minutes, because it was too depressing and obsessive. It was making me feel like crap, worse than if I just admit that she is not a good sleeper and live with it. Maybe if we just kept at it, practicing and repeating the routine for weeks and weeks, she would get used to transferring. But maybe she wouldn't, and it just seems so fruitless and frustrating to spend all the time (and deal with a cranky baby day after day) and see no results.

She has been taking naps, usually somewhere between 20 to 40 minutes, once or twice a day. And nursing down in the bed works sometimes, so thats good. Nursing or walking her down in the wrap works well too, and is better than her sleeping on my lap because I can move around, so we've been doing a lot of that too. Yesterday, Lonnie got her down in the crib with a bottle and no crying whatsoever, transfer and all! She was there for about 25 minutes when the FedEx man knocked, causing the dog to bark ferociously, and she awoke.

We are trying to keep the bedtime early, around 6:30-7:00, and I think it is working. Getting her to sleep has not taken too long, somewhere between 25 min to an hour (trust me, that is nothing compared to the 2-3 hour marathons that we were getting there for awhile). Some nights she wakes up a lot after that, needing to be nursed down again and again (these only take about 15 min though), but some nights there is only one or the occasional no wakeups before 10-11ish when I go to bed. Yeehaw!

Right now, unfortunately, she is screaming her head off upstairs with Lonnie, and has been for about 45 minutes. Lonnie gave her a bottle and took a short nap with her, I think, but she has had enough and is really putting up a fuss. She wants me and I am not there, and she is royally pissed about it. I wish she could handle being away from me for more than 20 minutes at a time. I really do. Geesh! This happens again and again.

On a cheerier note, she has been really talkative in her happy moments, too, and has started saying all sorts of consonant sounds, like ba and ma and la. I work with her on the ma ma ma more than the others. She is really starting to love the eating, too, and the baby led weaning concept is really working for us. I will post more on that soon.

Day 7
AM nap: 40 min in bed
Method: nursed down
PM nap: 90 min in bed
Method: Bottle and cuddle with Daddy
Crib attempt: one, unsuccessful
Asleep by: 9:00ish

Day 8 (yesterday)

AM nap: 45 min in car
Noon nap: 40 min in car
Do we like our new carseat: yes!
PM nap in arms: 25 min
Crib time: 0
Bedtime routine started: 6:30
Fell asleep: 7:00
Wakeups before 10:00: 4, after which I abandoned this post and went to bed

So, I've eased off on the crib napping attempts, mostly because we've been out and about. But we did start our new earlier bed routine last night! We had been trying to get her down earlier a few months back, but it just drifted later and later, until it was 8:30-9:00ish most nights. Yesterday, she had a great day, with a couple naps in the car which I extended buy listening to the radio in the Costco parking lot, and then keeping the car door and the house door open (with the dog on watch duty) while I unloaded and put away groceries. She did go down for the night pretty easy at that earlier time, though the wakeups were not so great after that. Hopefully we can get her used to sleeping for longer stretches once she gets into the early to bed routine.

Yesterday's Costco trip was our first solo (without Lonnie) trip since Emma was born. Ha! The thought of wrangling baby and cartons of foodstuffs was more than I could handle until now. But Emma is now very able and happy to ride in the cart (yahoo!) which makes a big difference. She lasted until we were in line, where she began screeching so I got her into the Kozy Carrier on my front to nurse. The elderly Asian grandparents with toddler in tow behind us rushed to help unload my cart for me, which was really nice. Look at what we scored for 25 bucks, too!

I think it was a return, and the guy who did the price check marked it down for me since there was only one of them. She loves it! It is all wood and has a whole bunch of wood, cloth and plastic blocks in it. She's not quite ready to walk with it on her own but loves pushing it with help, or crawling around/on it by herself.

Day 6 (yesterday)
Mins spent in crib awake: 8, while drinking bottle
Mins spent in crib asleep: 2, but then the bottle ended. Damn.
Nap in bed: hour and a half (!)
Nap in arms, at dinnertime: 20 min
Bedtime routine started: 7:30
Finally fell asleep, after much (silent) cursing: 10:00pm

Day 7 (today)

Napping in crib: one hour!!!
Who put her there: Daddy
Screaming: none, fell asleep in sling and actually transfered!
Would she ever, ever do that for Mama: no
Napping in arms: 20 mins
Bedtime routine started: 7:15
Aborted: 8:15
Fell asleep in wrap ("wearing her down"): 8:35
Nursed down in bed for the night: 9:45

So, now I am starting to get annoyed with this bedtime trend. She seems to get sleepy right at dinnertime, dozes a little and then gets a second wind that lasts for hours. She is tired, but crazy and crawling over everything, impossible to get still long enough to fall asleep. I didn't expect the wrap would work so well, but I put her in it in a front carry after I got tired of corralling her in the bed, and she fell asleep within 15 minutes as I did dishes, without even nursing! I kept her in it until she stirred and then the nurse down in the bed was quick and easy. I probably should try getting her to sleep earlier, when she first shows signs of sleepiness around 6:30 or 7:00. That means we are going to have to change our dinner time, earlier or later. Doable, and definitely worth it if we can get her to sleep a little easier and quicker. I think it is becoming a struggle because she is so overtired at that point. I don't know, maybe I'm just overthinking this a bit? Ya think?

I am reading an interesting book right now about the concept of ethnopediatrics, the study of child rearing across cultures, and it discusses the obsession with sleep that Americans/Westerners have. I have heard of this before, how parents in other cultures just don't obsess about their baby's sleep the way we do, partly because they sleep with the baby and are therefore not as disturbed by wakeups, etc, or wear them more and so they nap that way, in the sling. Sleep just isn't that big of an issue elsewhere! Jeesh, thats a novel idea. Supposedly Italian mothers obsess more about what and how their babies eat (I think I do a little of that as well) and parents of the !Kung tribe of Botswana worry more about motor skills and development. Interesting book. Must stop obsessing about sleep. Ha.

Well, Nap Regime 2007 has encountered a road block.

Teeth. The girl is teething. As we attempted some crib napping this afternoon, things quickly deteriorated into inconsolable screaming. She was very very unimpressed with the whole situation, and nothing, not even nursing, would help.

I have been feeling the bumps on her lower gums the past few days, but today I could see the telltale white lines. I gave her some Tylenol, and took her to bed with me, where she calmed down once distracted by stories. She slept with me, but woke twice when I got up. I have some homeopathic teething gel which we may try tomorrow.
So, here are the stats, but we are going to play it cool for a few days and see what happens. I don't think we will have much success with the new sleep routines if she is in pain, so for the most part that will have to be put on hold.

Total napping today: 10 min in stroller, 5 in arms, 40 in bed
Crib attempts: 2 miserable ones, plan aborted quickly
Mins sleeping in crib: 0
Asleep for night: 7:45pm

Minutes spent napping (in arms) before 6:00 PM: 35
Attempts to get her sleeping in the crib: 4
Mood: Grumpy
Screaming that ensued (with Daddy): 60 min
Crib sleep: 6:30-7:30 pm
Finally went down for the night: 9:45 pm

In cheerier news, the big bed situation has been remedied by taking down the bedframe, and setting the box spring & mattress combo on the floor. MUCH less scary drop now, if (when?) she goes overboard. And, no dust bunnies under the bed! It actually fits our room better, scale wise, since it is an attic room with low slanted ceilings. And its amazing how much more space we have in the room, to, getting rid of the head and footboard. Lonnie is thinking about making us a low platform style bedframe, and is plotting how to make it have fancy rolling side bars that come out from under the bottom and become a guard rail when needed. Ha!

Also tossed in a fit of room clearing: Big Dog Boat, the biggest dog bed in the world we called The Raft. Aiko now must settle for a regular, rectangular shaped bed that fits her size a bit better.

Did I tell you all we got a laptop? First laptop for home ever, an HP, and it is a pure joy. It is chic and shiny and black and thin but with a nice wide screen (and unfortunately tiny font, which I must remedy since it makes me feel near blind). It can run my Sims, if I were to desire (but alas, no time for them, sadly), and more importantly is connected to our wireless router so I can surf and post from the couch, or leisurely reclined in bed, as I am now! Ah, the luxury.

Two posts in one day! My gawd, what is up?

I wanted to get up to speed on recording the data from days one and two of our new experiment, Nap Regime 2007 (also known as Fun with Sleeping and Cribs).

The program started yesterday. It was started for two reasons:

1) The baby is not napping during the day, unless she is in arms. No other way will do. The bed or the Amby? Pishaw, that is for little babies, or grownups, but not 7.5 month olds. At the end of the day, she is a whiny, hysterical mess, as am I.

2) Our bed, which was working pretty well for awhile (not lately), is not safe for a crawler. It is tall, high, massive, and very far from the ground. I do not trust the lowly guard rail or the wall of pillows I carefully construct around her for more than a minute. I am hyper-vigilantly listening on the monitor when she is up there and run up at every peep, which is usually before she starts moving around too much, but it is a very faulty system which needs work (we are going to be taking the bed frame down in the next few days, but that still won't completely solve the issue, just make it a wee bit less scary)

So. We do have a crib, and it can be used for more than containment while I shower. The trick now is to get her to associate it with sleeping, not playing, which is what she has been doing in it so far. In the early days we tried to get her to sleep in it, to no avail. The time has come to try again.

The plan is to attempt some sleeping in the crib each day. I will only work on one nap a day (ideally she gets two, har har), and only two attempts at a given time; any more than that is too much for either of us, and spans the whole day anyway. I have not decided whether to let her sleep in arms at other times of the day or not. Part of me wants to cut her off from that completely, though at that point she really needs the sleep, any sleep (three days ago she took a two and a half hour nap in my arms in the PM). I might fall back on trying to get her down in the more familiar ways, nursing down in our bed, or letting her sleep on me in a carrier, ideally on my back. I know a lot of folks would have moved on to crying it out by now, but we just can't do that.

Day 1: Yesterday, I started with the morning nap. I took her in to her room when she was sleepy, put on her sleepy music, read her a story and rocked her in the glider while nursing her down. She fell asleep, and I attempted a transfer. She awoke upon impact of the mattress, I tried to resettle her by singing and rubbing her back but she awoke, so I nursed her down again and attempted transfer number two. She woke again, and in frustration I leaned over the crib rail to see if I could nurse her down like that. Hilarity insued. She was awake. After two attempts (my limit) I put her in the Kozy carrier on my back so I get some work done. She didn't sleep until later that day, in the swing, for less than an hour.

Day 2: Today, I tried the crib napping in the afternoon, since I had read that afternoon sleep is more solid. I attempted to nurse her down in our bed for the AM nap but she would not sleep. Later, she slept for about 25 minutes in the carrier while on a walk with Lonnie. Around 2PM she was definitely tired, so I did the nap routine in her room. We started a bottle, but I had an idea and took it away half way through and nursed her down, instead. She fell asleep, and then, when she awoke as I put her in the crib, I slipped the bottle in and got her back to sleep with that. Progress! We had sleeping in the crib for about 6 minutes before she awoke with a cry, and was wide awake after that. One 10 minute nap later in the day on me, one 15 min one in the bed. Total sleep less than an hour.

I am going to try to log in every days info for awhile, though I promise it will be way less chitter chatter and more reporting of the basic facts. I am hoping we will see some progress in a week or two...but am not counting on it. I don't expect our crappy sleeper to become a perfect napper; but something a little better than what we have now would sure be swell.

After three days of no napping, I am starting to get crazy. My house is a mess, Emma is whiny, and I have a headache.

The problem is that she is rather particular about her napping conditions. She'd prefer to nap on me, or at least with me, consistently. Most of the time, she will only fall asleep by nursing or motion. We've had a few breakthrough days/weeks where I thought things were getting better, but in general, they are the same, and bad. She is a crappy napper.

The car works wonders, but for the past three days she has fallen asleep in it (both to and from an event/errand) only to wake up as soon as I take her out of the car (5-10 min into the nap). I am not going to be one of those people that drives around for hours so their kid can nap. To much money, to much pollution. To boring!

We (Emma and I) just had a meltdown because I have been trying to use my awesome wraps, which many people swear by for situations like ours, and they are not working as awesomely as I'd hoped. They come with a steep learning curve, but you'd think after 6.5 months plus an obsession with babywearing plus reading every website known to (wo)man about the topic plus even owning the book, I would have gotten it by now. Doh!

I just sent out an SOS to my local babywearing group, and maybe someone there will take pity on me and come over and help (I haven't been able to get to their meetings since it meets on a day we are busy). I think maybe someone actually helping me do it, not just watching someone else do it, will help. I hope!

If I do eventually get the hang of it, think of all that I could get done! With a baby on your back, you can do anything! Like clean the house! Get out the Christmas decorations! Bake cookies! Paint! Shop! The possibilities are endless...

So, cosleeping.

I've written three half-posts about it and I keep deleting them thinking they sound preachy or boring or long. I have been reading a lot about it, because its a big part of our parenting these days. I mean, nighttime counts for a good 8-10 hours, you know? And most babies, well, at least our baby, do not go away for those hours. Not at all. Nada. She is always here, and always needing us for something.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that we do it. Yup. We didn't intend to, but it just happened by necessity early on, and now it works so well we don't think we'll stop. At least not yet. We do have a beautiful crib, one of our first baby purchases, and while I do like it quite a bit, and had visions of her sleeping in it from around now on and always for naps, that totally isn't happening. But what a nice place to put her when I need to shower or pee! It looks great in the room! And she will play in it for quite a while, sometimes...

So here is the down and dirty about our cosleeping. Ha, dirty cosleeping. That sounds not so good! In fact, thats why we as a culture stopped cosleeping (unlike most of the rest of the world)...the "experts" of the time thought that sleeping next to another person and breathing their air would cause illness. This is also why they made nurseries and incubators in hospitals and whisked healthy babies away from their parents into them. Much healthier than staying with dirty old mom!
So, back to the particulars:

• We started cosleeping the first week, when it was the only way to get her to stay asleep. She would sleep on us, as we slept on the couch, rocking chair, or bed. This is the not-so-safe way to cosleep (mainly the couch/chair thing) because proper safety precautions are not in place, and you are so exhausted you fall asleep without meaning to. I was always worrying about accidentally dropping her.
  
• Eventually, I started sleeping in the guest room with her, with pillow walls to make it feel safer. I kept blankets and pillows away from her, and once we got the hang of sidelying nursing, I really got a lot more sleep.
  
• We then moved into our bed upstairs all together, and soon got a guardrail on my side and a new, firmer, non-pillowtop mattress (soft beds are a no-no with young babies). We actually prefer the firmer mattress ourselves!
  
• No, I don't worry about rolling on her. It was something I was hyper-aware of in the beginning, along with keeping blankets away and other SIDS-y risks, but I realized that I am, like they say, always aware of where she is. The fact that I can't roll and flop over without care took a little getting used to, but now I am totally used to it.
  
• Since starting cosleeping, I have rarely felt tired or wiped out during the day . I wake up rested! I did not expect that to happen so soon, I always had the "foggy sleep deprived mother" image in my head and after the first two weeks that really didn't happen. Woo!
  
• We love it for a lot of reasons, but mainly it is because it truly simplifies our nights. Emma SUCKS at the "transfer" (from arms to bed) because she is a really light sleeper. You can get her to sleep (by nursing, bottle, or bouncing) and then as soon as you put her down in her bed (floppy arm stage or not) she wakes right up and smiles or screams, and then its another hour or so of trying to get her back to sleep. Rinse. Repeat.
  
• She also can not will not fall asleep if put in bed drowsy but awake. But nursing her down in our bed works every time!
  
• Lonnie also likes it because he gets to see more of her, and its great bonding time. It is nice to have our whole family close. He (lucky dog him) doesn't wake up much at all in the night when Emma does because she rarely cries, she just moves around or makes little sleepy sounds to let me know she's awake.
  
• She does, yes, wake up quite a bit. Maybe 5-6 times, sometimes less, sometimes more. No sleeping through the night here (though often a 4 hour chunk, which is nice)! Cosleeping breastfeeding babes are known to wake frequently...the all night diner is available and open for business! Yum! For us, though, this is something we actually need and want (at least early on, and even now to some degree) because of my low milk supply. Night feeding helps boost supply, and I think she gets a fair amount of calories at night. And, I sleep through much of it...I'm awake for maybe 5-10 minutes, max, most wakings. WAY better than waking up fully and sitting up/walking down the hall to feed, a couple times a night.
  
• I think there is really something to be said about the fact that cosleeping babies and moms sync up their sleep cycles, too. So when Emma wakes, she is waking me at a light point in my sleep cycle, so I am able to wake easily to help her latch on, then fall back to sleep without trouble. Even though I have fragmented sleep, I wake rested. Yahoo!
  
• I know a lot of people think you should teach your child to "self soothe" and sleep alone, perhaps by "crying it out", but that just does not feel right to us. We like to sleep near each other, are not surprised she likes it too. It feels like a natural thing, the right way to go for us. We like the idea that if you keep them close now, they will be more self-assured and independent later on. And no, we are not worried she will be in our bed forever. The people we've talked to who have cosleept say the transition, whenever it happened, went pretty smoothly.
  
• What about sex, you say? Is that any of your business? No, its not. But I will say that all the books I've read mention that having to get creative isn't such a bad thing....
  
• Lastly, I do have some concern about how things will go once she is more mobile, which is soon soon soon! This doesn't actually pertain to cosleeping at night when we are in the bed as much as when I leave her there for naps. The guard rail and pillow walls we construct to contain her will work for only so long. I am not sure we are willing to get rid of the bed frame and put the bed on the floor like so many cosleepers do. We may have to get her transitioned into the crib for naps, we'll see how that goes....