SLEEP

Oh the dreaded topic of sleep.  It's such a personal heated topic.  Here is our story.  Before Ayla was born my husband wanted to co-sleep and I was like "Not on your life!"  Then I ended up getting caught up in my Pump Station (which is like LaLeche League) classes and I bought the book "Sleeping With Your Baby" and I read it cover to cover  before giving birth and afterwards.  Ayla was born and she slept on my chest and slept on my tummy and slept between my husband and I and she slept next to me and slept in my arms while I walked around and sent emails and cooked dinners.  I never put her down.  It was painful to put her down.  We didn't even have a monitor set up to watch her, if she had been put down.  Oh those sweet yummy moments of this little thing sleeping on you and the comfort you have in knowing they are breathing okay.  It also makes the night feedings easier to handle.  However, around the 2-3 month mark I started to realize I was setting up Ayla's sleeping reality which was that in order to sleep, she needed to be held.  I also realized she was getting older and soon I would need my space and time to myself to get things done around the house.  Then around the 4 month mark I started tracking how much she was waking up at night and it had gone from 2 to 11 times!!  I was exhausted!  I read "The No Cry Sleep Solution," "Babywise," and "Healthy Sleep Habits Healthy Baby."  I read all of these while Ayla slept in my arms of course...after I got her to sleep from bouncing on a big blow up ball.  It was intense.  I tried the "No Cry Sleep Solution" for 2 weeks and gave up.  In my gut I knew I needed to let her cry it out.  The one thing I read that made the most sense to me was this idea that you have to allow them the opportunity to learn how to soothe themselves.  So, after coercing my husband into letting her cry, we went for it, cold turkey.  Put her in her own room, in her crib, came down stairs with the monitor and turned up the TV and held hands.  It was so hard the first night, but she did pretty well and only cried 40 minutes...which may sound like a lot to some of you.  We didn't go in her room to check on her, just starred at the monitor and looked at our watches.  The next two nights the same thing happened.  Then, all of a sudden her crying lessened to 10 minutes and then to 5 and we were set and rolling and I had never felt so alive and free.  Every time I put her down I came downstairs dancing and ready to tackle anything.  For me, this was a moment where I was able to feel like I could give Ayla the space and room to learn how to sleep on her own, which meant I could get things done,  I was my own person, for an hour or two.  We've had to revisit the crying it out a few times, after an illness or an exciting vacation, but it always works.  I also did end up using some techniques from the "No Cry Sleep Solution."  First, we set up a few verbal cues that it was night time, and day time.   I also found power in lights.  Turning them off is a huge cue for her that it's time for "nigh, nigh."  We do a bedtime routine every night, which very rarely varies from: Bath, Oil Massage, Song while we put on our PJ's, Daddy reads stories, and Nursing in the dark on the rocker.  I learned that babies sleep cycles are every 20 minutes, which helped a lot with naps.   If Ayla wasn't napping for more than an hour (which they say is the restorative time) she would usually wake up in either her first 20 or after 40 minutes crying and I run into her room and start nursing her ASAP and she'd fall asleep again and finish a nap, sometimes she'd fall asleep for a whole other hour and after a few days of this rushing in and putting her back to sleep she'd start sleeping the whole time.  I still use this today with her at 11 months.  Side note: babies do have a 5 hour sleep cycle where they go deeper into sleep and it's important for them to get 5 straight hours at some point.  Oh and if you jump up and feed them in the middle of the night, when they wake up crying, they will always wake up crying in the middle of the night for a feed.  So, we let her cry through some of those and soon she was sleeping all through the night.  The biggest thing was the guilt I would feel in hearing her cry and as long as I told myself she has to learn how to comfort herself, I felt okay.  Also, every time she puts herself to sleep (crying or no crying) she wakes up cooing.  This morning she sat in her crib and dangled her legs through the crib bars and played with her lovey for 15 minutes while I lazily got out of bed.  It's such a strange journey you discover with your child and your own comfort level.  The biggest thing I'd change with my next kid, is that I'd put them down more to sleep on their own...and resist those yummy moments where you have this little body sleeping on you...I mean I say that now...but who really knows.