Another first

Avery is nearly 3 and a half years old. She has ALWAYS required someone nursing, rocking, or cuddling her to sleep. We’ve loved the quality time we get with her now while we lay with her in her bed till she falls asleep – it’s a time for good conversation and lots of hugs and kisses. But we’ve also been putting the bug in her ear that we’d like her to be able to go to sleep on her own one day, when she feels ready.

We’d tried a couple of times when she thought she was ready, but as soon as we closed her door behind us she would start whimpering and saying there was a ghost, or that she missed us so much… So we’d go back in her room and say we’d try again another night.

Last night she declared that she was ready to go to bed by herself. It was my wife’s turn for bedtime, so she gave her a shower, brushed her teeth, and gave her her nightly medicine. She helped her into her pajamas, and read her a couple of books. Then she said goodnight and left the room. For a few minutes Avery laid by her door and peeked under it to see if we were still there. Then she gathered up a pile of stuffed animals and climbed into bed and went to sleep.

And that was it! Her first night going to sleep on her own was completely painless. She was ready. I don’t know if it’ll keep up every night, but I do think she got a sense of pride from it, so I’m hopeful. I’m also sad to have potentially lost that cuddle time, so we’ll have to make sure to get lots of extra cuddles in before bed and on the weekends… But having a confident child is worth a reduction in cuddles. I suppose it’s a necessary part of raising a child…

Nightmares

My child is amazing and wonderful and all I could ever wish for, and she is also a challenged (challenging?) sleeper. I have built this blog on that premise.

We’ve been through the 4-month sleep regression that lasted until she was 1, and then the 18-month sleep regression that lasted until she was 2. But the onset of the sleep regressions was only noticeable by the increase in already frequent wake-ups, or by the extension of already lengthy and trying bedtimes, so we basically consider her entire life so far as one giant sleep regression from her first night of life, when she slept for a magical 5 hours and I woke in a panic that she hadn’t been fed in so long. That amazing first night of her life was one of the best sleeps we’ve had.

Of course she has slept through the night since then, on and off. Weaning helped a bit, and then simply growing up a bit and becoming a 2 year old helped a bit. But even though things are easier and better at night than they used to be, there’s always something that comes up and fucks with our sleep. From night terrors to colds and flues to our newest experience, nightmares.

Avery has been waking up crying about weird things, in a delirious, semi-awake state. The other night she woke up crying about her plate being dirty. Another night she woke crying about her toys missing. Thankfully the content of her nightmares so far doesn’t seem to be terribly upsetting or disturbing (from a rational, awake-person’s point of view), but we all know that bad dreams seem so much worse when we first wake from them, with the stress hormone coursing through our blood. So I understand that Avery’s legitimately upset about the dirty plate dream, or the dream about all of her toys going missing. And so, I go to her bed and reassure her, and cuddle her back to sleep. Recently, though, she went through a week of multiple “nightmares” a night. Just another reason why sleep continues to evade us.

Maybe when she’s 14 and in the sleepy teenager phase, we’ll get a good night of sleep.

The parent preference

Bedtimes are pretty lovely now when it’s my night to put Avery to bed. She’s agreeable, and she loves to flop on her bed and read the agreed-upon number of books together, and then cuddle in close to fall asleep. I listen to her singing songs quietly to herself, and I get lots of kisses and hugs.

But when my wife puts her to bed, it’s still cause for an emotional breakdown. My wife does bedtime for 2 nights on, 2 nights off. We take turns, and keep that pattern consistent. But on the nights my wife is on, Avery screams and cries that she doesn’t want her Mo – she wants to sleep with mommy. She won’t let her Mo hold her books and instead piles them up at her bedroom door saying they’re for mommy. She pleads with her Mo that mommy is right on the other side of the door (“mommy right there!”) and that she wants mommy instead. Eventually, after about 10 minutes of crying and pleading, she gives in and lets her Mo read her books and then cuddles up with her to fall asleep. But if she so much as hears a floorboard creak outside her door, she gets upset again, asking for mommy. I take off as soon as I’ve said goodnight and get as far away from her room as possible because I hate hearing her cry for me when I can’t go to her.

It’s so hard on my wife. I don’t know what to do to change the situation, if there’s even anything we can do. I hope she comes around to her Mo soon.

On a related note, she still asks for milk at every bedtime, even though we weaned almost 2 months ago. She asks, and then remembers, “milk all gone.” She then settles for her water, but will “forget” and ask again a couple of times during each bedtime. It’s wild how hard-wired nursing was in her brain, and how hard it was for her to give it up.

Nap training a toddler

Avery hasn’t napped anywhere but in the car or in the stroller since we weaned. She has given us a few tantrums when we’ve tried. One of them even lasted for 2 hours before I gave up on nap time for that day. But she has been starting to refuse to get into the stroller when she knows it’s to nap, and I can’t keep burning gas for a 2 hour nap. So, nap training had to happen.

Day 1.

It was a bit unplanned. I realized the stroller was in the back of my wife’s car, at work with her. I explained to Avery on the drive home from her half-day daycare that we were going to have a nap in her bed today, because it was time for her to learn to fall asleep in a bed at naptime. I told her we could read a book and then we’d lay down together on her bed.

She started crying immediately – still on the drive home. “No bed!!! Mommy drive car!! Tv!! Paw patrol!! No bed!” She was begging for any alternative.

I dragged her, kicking and screaming, into the house and up to her room. I dimmed the lights.

For the next hour and a half, she had a violent tantrum. I had to hold the door closed (from the inside – I stayed with her). I asked if she wanted me to leave, in case my presence was making it worse, but she said “mommy stay!”. She screamed like a demon. I tried to strike a balance in my voice between calm/loving and stern/confident. I kept my words short and infrequent to allow her to get her rage out. When I spoke, I repeated,

“I love you, and you need to sleep.”

“We’re staying here for nap time. You can cry on the floor, or you can come and cuddle with me and go to sleep.”

“Come to bed now.”

She didn’t calm down and take a breath. Like, at all. I eventually had to start physically removing her from her door handle and putting her in bed. Every other second. When I would say “I love you” she started to scream “I love you” back, and I began to worry that I was somehow emotionally abusing her – making her think she needed to say I love you to get away from my grasp. I had to physically block her from leaving her bed. Her eyes were rolling back in her head. I could just see white through her exhausted squint. She had bags under her eyes. She was hoarse, losing her voice. She could barely stand up when she would escape the bed – she’d stumble and fall and hit her head on the floor. She was so exhausted.

We were both soaked in sweat. Her hair was plastered to her forehead.

I knew I couldn’t lose resolve, or this would all be for nothing. She wouldn’t understand why I was being so authoritative if I suddenly gave up and let her leave her room and not nap. It was hard.

But then she went limp. She just couldn’t fight any more. She whimpered, through closed eyes, “read book?” I grabbed her favourite alphabet bedtime book from beside the bed and started reading it very quietly and softly. Her eyes remained closed. Once I heard the snores, I put down the book and breathed. It worked.

Now to do it all over again tomorrow.

Just another post about weaning from breastfeeding and #sleep.

Sorry to those followers who like to hear new stories about my goings-on. This is old news. We’re trudging through the challenging and sad territory of weaning from breastfeeding with a toddler who has only ever been able to sleep through breastfeeding.

It’s been about a month since we night weaned again (I say again because we night weaned a few months ago but that attempt only lasted two weeks). There have been two – maybe three – nights where I’ve broken down after hours of middle-of-the-night wakefulness and nursed my toddler back to sleep. Other than that, she only nurses twice a day – to sleep for nap, and to sleep at bedtime. She has handled the night weaning well for the most part, and doesn’t ask for milk through the night anymore. Thankfully, there really weren’t very many tears over the change. Occasionally when she’s having a rough time with a cough or congestion, an itchy rash, or being overtired she’ll ask politely for milk, but when I calmly say “no milk until bedtime” she doesn’t ask again. She has unlimited access to hugs, kisses and cuddles, as well as warm mint tea for that belly-warming feeling.

The first time we tried night weaning, she ended up sleeping through the night for the first time ever. I thought night weaning was our golden ticket to better sleep. I thought she was only waking so much at night because she had become conditioned to get milk at those times, and by de-conditioning her, she’d no longer wake. But last night, not unlike every other night this month, she woke up 5 times and stayed awake from 1am until 3am. And then she was up for the day at 4:30. She’s at daycare right now, but I’m just waiting for the call that she needs to come home early to sleep (she does half days and has her nap at home with me after lunch).

We’re just as exhausted as we were when she was an infant. It has me aching to spend a night in bed with her, letting her nurse freely through the night, so we all get a good sleep. But we keep hoping that eventually she’ll figure out how to fall back asleep without milk, and we don’t want to drag this process out by taking a step backwards.

This experience has reinforced my decision to not sleep train her using conventional methods – it’s right for some kids, not right for others. She’s the kind of kid who will stay awake ALL NIGHT LONG to get what she wants. In the crib, she would have cried for hours. In her toddler bed, she can get up and get a stuffed animal she wants, she can come and get me from my room without crying for me, she can easily remove or get another blanket… I’m happy we waited to try independent sleeping (without nursing or co-sleeping) until she was actually independent. I think she would have been awake just as much had we done it earlier, but she would have been a lot more distressed about it.

So life now is a waiting game, and we’re just trying to survive while we wait. We’re doing what we can to help her sleep – cuddles, reassuring cheek kisses, lots of rest through the day – but nursing through the night is no longer a tool in our toolbox. We want to see this through.

Wish us luck…

Daylight saving time had nothing on us

Sleep has been so messed up lately that we didn’t even notice the daylight saving time change.

My mom did bedtime on Friday night because my wife and I were out on a date until 11:30 (cue applause). It didn’t go great… It’s the second time my mom did bedtime, but the first time she did it there was frozen milk to offer in a bottle. This was the first night Avery had to go to sleep with absolutely no milk. Apparently there were lots of tears, and she finally fell asleep at 9pm. She woke a lot through the night and wanted long cuddles – she clearly missed us. I felt really guilty.

She continued her 4:30-5:30am wake ups over the weekend.

On Saturday night she was awake from 11:30pm until 3am, trying valiantly to get back to sleep without nursing. She tossed and turned both next to us and on her own, she sang to herself, she played quietly with stuffed animals, but finally she started to lose her patience at 3 (as did we), and I nursed her to sleep (it took just a few minutes, after hours of trying on her own). And then of course she was up for the day at 5am.

On Sunday she begged to go for a nap at 9am. We had a friend’s first birthday party that day over Avery’s usual nap time, so we thought an early nap would be ok. She slept for 30 minutes. She was so exhausted that by the time we got home from the part she slept for 3 hours. She woke up at 6pm. Never a good sign for bedtime.

She went to bed at 9pm, and although she only woke twice through the night, I was so tired that I fell asleep sitting on the floor next to her bed both times and now I’m super stiff.

This is nothing too out of the ordinary for us, but the tough sleep stints are always hard. I know it will be over soon enough, and I just have to cling to that thought.

Anyway, we barely noticed that daylight saving time was occurring. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse that having to deal with transitioning a schedule-rigid kid to a different bedtime and wake up time… Either way, we’ve always had bigger sleep-fish to fry than to worry about a time change.

Reflections on Night Weaning (at it again…)

*Photo from Pixabay.com

Night weaning is hard, even when it’s easy. Avery’s only nursing twice a day now, to sleep at nap and bedtime. It’s a big change from nursing all night long, snuggled beside me. We’re doing this to give her a gentle nudge toward sleep independence, but it’s just as much about me breaking my dependency on nursing away her every tear, every cough, every nightly stir. That has been such a wondrous gift, and although I’m theoretically ready to make the separation, my heart never will be.

I miss her as I lay in my bed and listen to her snore through the monitor. I feel jilted that I can’t lay with her all night anymore (part of our night weaning plan). I feel anxious waiting for her next wake up, wondering how difficult it’ll be to get her back to sleep, how many tears she’ll shed, how long the protest will last.

We have officially been one week without night nursing. I’m going to give it another couple of weeks before claiming that the transition period is over, but so far Avery’s doing a really good job learning to get back to sleep without nursing. Last time what broke us was her 3-5am insomnia, and her being sick. Both of those things are happening again, but we’re powering through this time. With every month older she gets, she can also understand better what’s expected of her at night, and that makes me feel better about it.

With the huge decrease in nursing comes a change in hormones. I’m getting some signs that I might be ovulating for the first time in almost 2 and a half years. Yes, you read that right – I haven’t had my period since we conceived Avery. It has been a wonderful, crampless, dry, and clean part of my life. I’m not eager for it to return.

One final reflection on night weaning: choosing to night wean was a decision I made for my marriage over my child. That alone has a lot of complex emotions associated with it. And while my wife is purely excited, I have to keep reminding myself that my marriage deserves to get priority over the child this once. It will all trickle down to benefit Avery in the long run. If my wife and I are a satisfied, happily married team, Avery will have a good relationship role model to look up to in her parents.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 24

It has been what, maybe a week since I started down the slow weaning road again? She’s already showing signs of self-weaning all the way. We cut out all nursing sessions during the day except for nursing to sleep for nap and bedtime, and we still allow nursing through the night. She has started to come off the boob at bedtime and roll over to be spooned the rest of the way to sleep. She has only been waking once or twice a night for milk. It’s amazing what cutting back on nursing does to her sleep….

The downside is that she only had a bit of milk from one side at bedtime today, and she didn’t have any at nap, so one side is full of hard lumps. We’re staying with family this weekend and I don’t have a pump to help me out, and I’m garbage at hand expressing. So I find myself actually hoping that she’ll wake up soon for a nighttime feed…

30 Days of Blogging, Day 21

We had our first toddler bed challenge tonight, where Avery decided to get up and leave the bed and pull out half of her books from her book shelf and have a fight with the door knob trying to escape. She tried to fall asleep when we first got into bed. We cuddled, she nursed, and she seemed almost ready to drift off.

And then she decided to sit up and get her water bottle, and then she decided to feed her water to me, and then she noticed her books on her bedside table and wanted to read them again, and then she climbed down off her bed and walked away. I asked her to come back and lay down and go to sleep. She ignored me. I picked her up and laid her back down in bed. She screamed and flailed. She got out of bed. I asked her to come back. She ignored me. I brought her back. This went on for a few rounds, until I decided to stop fighting her and just laid down and kept calmly repeating, “it’s bedtime. Time to sleep. Come lay down.”

And then, suddenly, she stopped fussing at the door and walked over to me and gave me a big hug. She climbed back into bed beside me and after another 20 minutes or so of cuddles with only intermittent nursing, she was asleep. It feels good to win these battles. It gives me confidence for the post-weaning bedtimes that are ahead of us.

 

30 Days of Blogging, Day 13

Bed-sharing is helping my marriage.

OK, it’s way more complicated than that, but here’s the thing… When I wanted to bed share and my wife didn’t, and we tried for months to get her to stay in her crib, fighting with her, fighting ourselves at 2am when we just wanted to give up and bring her to our bed, it was hard on us. I resented my wife for pushing for Avery’s night time independence. My wife didn’t deserve resentment, and she felt like an evil outsider with me and Avery in cahoots. But baby/toddler sleep issues are tough on everything, especially marriage.

Avery still starts out the night in her toddler bed, but since she got sick again a week ago, she is welcomed into our bed after we go to bed for the night. My wife welcomes her. Avery wakes up happy in the morning, grabs her Mo by the ears, and gives her a big kiss. It makes my wife happy. We’re no longer silently fighting each other on what to do about sleep. 

Sure, we sleep toddler-width apart (which is like 5 feet, it seems), and we haven’t been giving each other the physical attention we need to give, but just being on the same side of the argument for a change is so refreshing.

*The pic is of us at my wife’s work Christmas party, free from the stress of bedtime for the first and only night of our lives as parents.