My child doesn't sleep

When I created this blog back in 2011, I was 9 months pregnant and suffering from insomnia. Now, more than a year later, I'm still not getting any sleep.

My beautiful daughter, Alice Ashley, is 16 months old and still doesn't sleep through the night. Not even close. She is still up 3 times a night, on average. (Some lucky nights she will sleep 4, 5, even 6 hours straight but that's not the norm.)

Sleep is something Alice has struggled with since the day we brought her home from the hospital after a wonderful natural birth. Naps have always been short and for about 10 months, she was up every two hours during the night. 

Before I had Alice, I had wonderful notions about what kind of parent I would be and how my child would fit neatly into those expectations. All the mothers are laughing right now, I know. If you learn anything from your children, it's that expectations get left by the wayside.

(A bit of irony…my first blog post actually included the words "Baby girl [is] actually a great sleeper." Oh how I wish that would have translated outside the womb!)

I read. Too much. So when Alice came and didn't fit the mold of any book or website, my type A personality fought her tooth and nail.

Surely, Alice not sleeping was due to some fault of my own. If I could just get her to fall asleep without nursing or rocking, she would stay asleep longer. Nope.
If I could pat her on the back, shushing in her ear, she would sleep longer. Wrong.
Sneaking in a dream feed? Ha!

I trolled websites and forums looking for posts from other moms in a similar situation. I read and tried to implement every method other than cry-it-out. The Baby Whisperer, The Happiest Baby on the Block, The No-Cry Sleep Solution, on and on.

Nothing worked.

There were many tears. Alice's 30 minute naps didn't give me a lot of time to rest and since I was also struggling with a moderate case of postpartum depression, the lack of sleep just compounded the issue. Since I'd never battled with depression before, I fought that too. If I could just get more rest, I could beat it. I didn't need medicine. After 4 months and repeated pleas from my sister, I finally saw my doctor and got on Zoloft. It took the full 6 weeks but I did start to feel better. I stopped crying all day, every day. I stopped feeling like a failure as a mother. I slowly began to accept that my baby girl was just not a sleeper.

I know many moms will think that's a cop out. I don't care. The one thing I could never do lay my baby down and walk away. I could not tolerate infant Alice crying. It grated my nerves, raised my blood pressure, made me anxious. And I think that's OK. More than OK, that's instinct. Nature.

And yes, I know different cries mean different things and believe me, I know the difference between Alice fussing and Alice crying. I'm OK with fussing -- I'm not OK leaving my screaming baby alone in a room for any period of time. That's just me.

(Full disclosure: At the age of 10 months, I decided to let Alice fuss at bedtime, rather than nurse or rock her to sleep. She cried and fussed almost every night for two months after which I stopped since it wasn't helping her sleep any longer and was only frustrating for all of us. Since then we've implemented a gradual withdrawal method, which worked much better -- more on that in a later post.)

Slowly, I stopped obsessing and just let my baby be. She slept when she was tired and was awake when she wasn't. I enjoyed her budding personality and gradually figured out how to be a stay-at-home mom.

Alice was the happiest baby and still is the happiest toddler. She is rarely cranky and almost never cries or even fusses. She grew right on schedule and hit all of her milestones early. At 16 months, she knows her body parts, makes a bunch of animal noises and uses 20+ words well.

She loved (still loves) to nurse and so I am enjoying this time with my baby. Alice will only be little once and I am trying not to hurry her through her childhood.

I know many people have many opinions on sleep training their babies. I'm not interested. My blog is a place for me, one mom, to share the story of my baby, who never slept like the books said she would and who is still a happy, content, wonderful child.

And one day, I will sleep again!

Alice's Natural Birth

Before Chris and I had even started trying to get pregnant, I knew I wanted to have a natural birth. I had a lot of reasons but they boiled down to these main two: I don't do well with pain medication of any kind and I wanted my baby to enter the world free of drugs.

I knew I couldn't just walk into the delivery room and hope for the best. I had to be prepared. So I changed doctors from an OB to a Certified Nurse Midwife, who had hospital privileges and was much more accepting of my desire to have a natural birth. I also hired a doula, Candace, to be there for me and Chris during labor and delivery.

During my pregnancy, I ate well, practiced prenatal yoga, joined a prenatal swim class, went to the chiropractor and read... a lot. Chris and I also attended an in-depth natural childbirth class, which was awesome for both of us.
Around the end of my third trimester I also used active relaxation and positive affirmations to get my mind in a better place. I kept telling myself things like, I can do this, my body was designed to give birth naturally, I'm strong, my baby is strong, etc. I worked hard to stay positive and upbeat even when others were negative.

Strangely, everyone had an opinion about my decision to have a natural birth. After many eye rolls, "oh, you'll get the drugs" and "why would you do that?" comments, I decided to keep my choice to myself. I was tired of the naysayers (interestingly, a lot of them were men) and deep down I was a little scared I might not be able to do it and I didn't want everyone to say "I told you so" when it was all over.

Around 12:50 a.m. on February 16th (one day before my due date), I woke up to go to the bathroom and my water broke. I wasn't having any contractions but I texted our doula, Candace, to let her know. Since I wasn't contracting, she told me to try to rest and go back to sleep, if possible. As soon as our conversation was over, I started having contractions. They were about 8 minutes apart and they were intense enough that I couldn't go back to sleep. I told Chris to get some rest and I went to take a shower. By the time I got out 20 minutes later, the contractions were about 6 minutes apart. For the next hour or two, I labored in the bathroom by myself, trying to keep track. They kept coming closer and closer together.

Around 3:30 a.m., Chris woke up and asked me what was going on. I told him I thought they were about 3 minutes apart and about 1 minute in length. He jumped out of bed and asked why I hadn't woken him sooner. He took a quick shower and started to load the car, all the while trying to help me breathe. I texted Candace again with my progress, and around 4:15 asked her to come over. By the time she arrived at 5:15, I'd had several urges to push. It was all happening so fast, I really couldn't believe it. Since I was a first-time mom, I'd been prepared for a long labor.

All this time the contractions were very intense but I never felt like I couldn't handle them. I had a few where I was breathing too quickly and Chris had to remind me to pause between each breath and that helped tremendously. The most uncomfortable part was the hot and cold chills (I was going through transition but didn't know it at the time).

Candace felt my stomach, watched me go through a contraction and said, "let's get to the hospital." We live only 8 minutes away but it was a long 8 minutes. At the triage station, the nurse asked me (a little condescendingly), "Oh, are you having some contractions?" When I told her I was feeling the urge to push, she looked at me like "yeah, right" and asked me to give her a urine sample, put on a gown and lay down on the bed.

There was no way I could do any of that and after I had another contraction and tried to pant through the urge to push, Candace called in another nurse who examined me and said (a little shocked), "She's complete!" She yelled for the on-call doctor and started pushing my bed down the hall. She told another nurse to page Jana, my midwife, and told Chris (who was just coming back from parking the car) we were headed for Labor and Delivery.

Less than an hour later, Alice Ashley Lundgren was born at 6:50 a.m., weighing 7 lbs. 15 oz and measuring 20 inches long. I delivered on my hands and knees, in one of Chris's T-shirts. The nurses didn't even have time to put a hospital bracelet on me until after the delivery.

I wanted to have Alice close to me for as long as possible so I didn't even let the nurse take her to be weighed and measured until an hour later when Alice made the trip down to the nursery with Chris. The nurse was a little huffy with me when I asked if she could just do her exams with Alice on me -- she said, "well you don't have a scale on your chest." I told her I didn't care about her weight right now and just wanted to get Alice breastfeeding right away. (I'm such a rule breaker.)

The natural high that followed giving birth was unbelievable. I was sore and tired, yes, but also full of energy -- at least for the next few hours. Alice latched on right away and then slept soundly for the next few hours. I should have too but the visitors started almost immediately (that will be different with the next baby). :)

I'm so glad I was able to have Alice naturally. Even though the labor was short (6 hours total), it was hard and intense and pushing took all of my concentration and energy, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Giving birth without drugs was totally empowering and I felt so accomplished knowing I had given my daughter a great start in the world. If and when baby number 2 comes along, I can only hope the experience is just as good.

Haven't slept a wink

I've been awake since 2:30 a.m., a regular thing during this last trimester. Baby Girl isn't keeping me up -- she's actually a great sleeper -- I'm just awake. My body is exhausted but my mind is active.

So what the heck...I got out of bed and started a blog.
Parents do stuff like that, right?