This post is the product of several months of questioning myself as a mother, but also being deeply resolved in the belief that I know my son's disposition better than anyone else. It's a weird place to be. Also from an experience of loneliness, of sorts, because I couldn't find a single person in real life who was experiencing the same thing we were.
Background, intro, etc: I love Cade to itty, bitty, tiny pieces. He's perfect and I adore him and he makes me happier than I thought possible. There is one thing I've learned about him, and it made me feel like a failure first-timer newb too until this weekend and it is this:
My son is afraid to sleep. Or has some serious FOMO. I'm not sure. In any case, he has struggled with sleep since was a brand new baby. Napping was not his game. Sometimes we have a day or two where he takes REAL GOOD naps and I'm like, aw yes- I've made it. I've taught my child to sleep.
And then the next day hits and I'm like, Okay. Kidding. Nope.
And night time? He was on a pretty consistent wake schedule from a month old. Up every 3 hours, then we'd get a six hour and a four hour stretch, and then by 4 months he was down at 8:30, dream feed at 10, and then would sleep til 6. It was amazing and I felt like the most rockstar parent in the world.
Then 6 months hit and our world turned upside down. Separation anxiety is real. The minute he figured out that we existed and were currently existing somewhere other than right next to him he forgot how to sleep. We average 2-4 night wakings, almost never less but very often in the 5-7 times a night range.
All you moms who are reading this and thinking, "She doesn't know what she's doing. I've taught all of my kids to sleep and if he was mine we'd have nipped that in the bud and have him back to sleeping through in a week" are funny. Maybe you could, I don't know. The list of things I've tried is impressively long.
We have:
- Done controlled crying where I sit next to his crib so he knows he's not alone.
- Done cry-it-out. For a week. For bed time, for night wakings. Let me tell you - my son will cry from the minute the sun goes down til it comes right back up again.
- Tried to bring back the cluster feed (it's not a "he's hungry" issue. Have you seen my boy? He's a chunk).
- Kept a consistent routine. Every night - it's dinner, bath, walk, play, feed, bed. He's able to put himself to sleep between 8-9.
- Fed him closer to bedtime
- Fed him further from bedtime
- Altered the temperature in his room
- Give him a lovey to sleep with
- Try really hard to tire him out during the day
- He decided at 4 months that pacifiers weren't really his thing so no thanks
- Thumbs are not soothing either
It's the most painful thing to listen to your baby inconsolably screaming. After a week of cry-it-out, with him crying longer at the end than at the start, it was pretty clear that this wasn't going to help. Our current routine is to give him a few minutes when he wakes to see if he will work it out (19/20 times this will not happen) and if it escalates to standing up and screaming I'll go get him and hold him for 5-15 minutes til he's calmed down or back to sleep and put him back in bed. I'm not remotely ashamed to admit that on really hard nights I'll take him back to bed with me and let him nurse for comfort for the last hour or two of darkness just to get some shut eye (which is why I'm absolutely terrified of weaning).
This is something I understand and accept about him. He's scared to be alone. He's an extremely light sleeper (got that from his momma) and is a relatively low sleep-need child. I anticipate that once he is able to understand reason we will be able to work through this and hopefully eventually have a sibling he can share a room with so that he doesn't feel so scared when he wakes at night. Until then, we have an abundance of late-night cuddles, I'm SO UNBELIEVABLY GRATEFUL for the blessing of comfort nursing (I don't care that he's 10 months old, you do what you gotta to be able to function during the day and I will continue for as long as he nurses).
He's also a really alert, active, happy kid - so I figure he's doing just fine.
My message to ANYONE on the interwebs who is frantically searching for the right answer and the way to turn this around and feeling lonely: I don't have the answer for you - but stop reading the google articles that tell you you're going to cause your child to have x/y/z behavioral issues or stunted intelligence. Some kids need more sleep. Some need less. Some need a little more help at night. If you've got one of those too, we can be virtual besties at 12, 2, 3:15, 4:30, 5:45 and whatever other times our kids wake up.
Deal? Deal.
