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!
