When I announced my pregnancy, I did so by posting "Enter Madness, Exit Sandman" along with a picture of my sonogram. Truer words were never spoken. The Madness has been exactly as wonderful as I expected, but the sleep has been a different animal all together. First of all, there is my Mommy Insomnia. This will be a post unto itself one day but the long and short of it is that with Lilah's birth, I lost the biological ability to fall asleep without pharmacological intervention. Now, Ambien has long been a lover of mine however, she makes a better mistress than life partner. I am finally (thank you HMO) working with a sleep clinic to banish the sleep meds to their rightful place in the back of my medicine cabinet, but for now I pop a pill every night as I turn out the light because waiting simply wastes my time.
In addition to my own chronic insomnia being a surpise, no one ever told me that babies sleep would be a dynamic thing, constantly changing, each night with its own unique challenges. I thought it would be marked by specific milestones that once crossed became "fond" memories that I would "forget" to share with my own children when they had children of their own.
My parents tell me I didnt sleep through the night until I was two so when Lilah started doing it at 5 months, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and concluded that her sleep success was a combination of luck, the plus side of not being able to breastfeed and karmic balancing from the 3 months of colic that almost consumed me. Silly Mommy. The first sleep regression eventually resolved itself after her bottom teeth came in and the boiling diaper rash cleared up after 3 weeks of searing her poor little patootie. The next one came out of nowhere and was only addressed when we vowed never to feed her in the middle of the night again (This vow coming only after the night she woke at 1AM and screamed for almost 3 hours, refusing even her beloved bottle). About 8 days ago, she stopped going to sleep on her own. Went from good night kisses followed by promptly rolling to her side and drooling herself to sleep to goodnight kisses followed by HOWLING. Maybe she was practicing for Halloween?
We gave in easily and started giving her bottles to fall asleep, which in combination with the morning bottles in our bed that she had grown accustomed too, taught her that bed was for certainly for bottles, not for sleeping. Last night, I told her no more bottles in bed, period. "If you want a bottle, you have to come into the kitchen to have it" (Yes, I told this, in English, to a 9 month old). She screamed for the next hour, only pausing when I picked her up and when I swore I heard her say "I do want want to come to the kitchen to try some milk."
Now that I have the tools to at least manage my own sleep issues, the temptation to bring her into my bed and hold her all night, rather than work through these issues is strong, especially since my dreams of co sleeping during her newborn days never came to pass but I know better than that. Though I know other mommies feel differently, based on my own sleep issues, I believe it will be more traumatic for her to learn how to sleep alone the longer I wait. For now, we use the Five Minute Ford sleep training method. I let her cry for 5 minutes, hold her for 5 minutes and repeat until she eventually falls asleep. She's been quiet for half an hour now. Ford Method ftw. For now....
The Original Pic
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