It was five o’clock and my husband, James, walked in the door after being at work all day. I was in the rocking chair with our six week old daughter, Ella, where I would nurse her that time of day. It was January and dark, dark, dark at five o’clock, and a feeling of dread would overcome me when James came home. I was so happy to be with him, but his coming home signaled night fall, and a long, dark period in which I was utterly exhausted but not able to sleep for more than a few hours at a time – Freddy Kreuger from The Nightmare on Elm Street movie came to mind a lot. That’s life with a newborn – little did we know!
Fast forward nine months: Ella started sleeping through the night at about ten and a half months old. One of those first nights when Ella was sleeping, James and I started having conversations again (somehow we remembered each other’s name and had this vague sense that we were married)! After months of not having a real conversation, the first thing we talked about was how we were completely flabbergasted that ten and a half months later, sleep would still be an issue. Pre-baby, we both had this notion (which makes me laugh hysterically now) that if you wanted a baby to sleep, you put the baby in his or her crib and voila, you have a sleeping baby. I even remember a co-worker saying to me when I was pregnant that babies don’t know the difference between night and day, so they’re up all night and sleep all day. I just wasn’t getting it; I KNEW that my baby would be different.
Now go back again nine months to the beginning, before we knew what the light at the end of the tunnel would look like. Essentially, we were grasping at straws trying to figure it all out. Our Bradley birthing class instructor said to get a five hour stretch of sleep several times per week or post-partum depression could set in. Well, how is that possible if you’re nursing and the baby needs to eat every two hours? Ella was too small to be able to nurse in the side-lying position in bed with me. She needed to be held, so I needed to be sitting up, which meant getting up. It was painful.
We went through many cycles of Ella sleeping in her crib and co-sleeping, and where she was sleeping depended on how we could best meet our needs as a family at that time. Wow – this is quite a challenge: we take all of our competing needs and attempt to fulfill them in such a way that everyone thrives. It requires a lot of patience (because sometimes our needs take a back seat) and openness (to realize we may need to meet our needs in a way that is not our first choice). Here we are at a paradox again: as a mom, I would like to model taking care of myself and yet sometimes meeting my needs just isn’t going to happen. Here is where the tricky balance comes in and I suspect that I’ll spend a lifetime trying to figure it out. At the very least, I’d like to be able to chew my food and digest at mealtimes.
Back to the crib / co-sleeping dance. We learned that if you are co-sleeping, everyone in bed has to be getting good sleep or it is not working. Ella slept in a bassinet next to our bed when she came home from the hospital (or in our bed from time to time). We were eager to get Ella sleeping in her crib because she would wake up every time we moved, so we had to sleep like mummies which was annoying. Eventually James slept in the guest room. Ella started sleeping well in her crib at eight weeks, but then eventually resisted going to sleep so we brought her in bed with us and we all fell asleep together during most of her fifth and sixth months. Eventually, Ella would fall asleep in her crib again, but we would bring her in bed when she woke up to eat. We did this into her ninth month. I went back to work part-time when Ella was four months, so that’s the main reason why we brought her to be with us – it was very easy to nurser her during the night and I’d barely have to wake up. However, she got bigger and started kicking, so we needed to get her back into her crib – i.e., the sleeping arrangement was no longer working for 2 out of 3 of us. When we transitioned Ella back to her crib, she did very well. She was ready to have her own space at night and being away from the “snack bar”, she woke up a lot less frequently. At ten months, we let her cry one night when we put her to bed (because we NEEDED sleep) and she only cried for 20 minutes, and has slept through the night since.
Now the main concern that I have is WHAT IF SHE STOPS SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT. OK, I tell my self that I shouldn’t worry about things that I have no control over, but if Ella squawks at night, it’s like I get struck with a lightening bolt of fear that she’ll wake up and never sleep through the night again. So far that hasn’t happened and I remind myself to trust the process – I survived ten and a half months of interrupted sleep, and I’ll survive again if I get a few more nights of bad sleep.
In summary, here is what I have learned about baby sleep: reading the many (and contradicting) books on baby sleep if that is what you want to do is fine – add tools to your tool box – but I would advise tuning into your family and trusting your intuition. By fumbling through this process, Ella eventually learned to sleep though the night and so will your baby. It feels like an eternity when you’re in the midst of sleep deprivation, and it’s painful. I wish I could help with that, but all I can do is recommend drinking lots of coffee.
