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.

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Night weaning log – night 1

7:00pm Bedtime was easy and peaceful. It hasn’t been that way in a while. No pinching or climbing on me, no back and forth wanting rocked, fed, rocked, fed… Just a calm nurse to sleep after reading a couple of books. It took 20 minutes total instead of the hour it has been taking lately. A perfect final bedtime routine before a night of changes. I don’t want to move her to the crib. This is the last she’ll be calmly attached to me till morning. I’m nervous about the night ahead, but I’m ready for battle. I think.

9:40pm My wife rocked it. Got her back to sleep in a couple of minutes flat. No tears.

10:30pm Wife rocked it again. Fast, no tears.

12:15am Wife wasn’t waking up, so I gave it a shot. She cried half heartedly for milk for about 5 minutes and then fell asleep on my shoulder. I failed at the first attempt at transferring her to the crib, but got her down within 15 min.

12:35am Just got back to bed and she woke up again… Clearly my transfer wasn’t that smooth. Sent wife in. 45 minutes of intense screaming for mama. I had my fingers in my ears. The cats were crowding my face, worried about her. Finally my wife won the battle and got her to sleep on her shoulder. Transfer to crib took another half hour – Avery didn’t want to let go of the warm body. I feel bad for my wife. I know this is as hard on her physically as it is on me emotionally. Avery weighs 28 pounds now and fights us with every last ounce when she’s upset.

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Crying. My shift. I chug some juice for energy and prepare myself. I check the time –

6:00am.

She slept through till morning! I have gotten up to nurse her back to sleep at LEAST twice between midnight and 6am every night for her entire life, but after being refused milk and refused mama through all those tears, she may be getting the hint…

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*side note: the behind the scenes of our night weaning process included 2 weeks of cutting out all random, on-demand feeds through the daytime. I said “no milk right now” and offered water, food, or hugs instead of milk. The purpose of this was to get her used to having me call the shots. The only daytime feeds she has had for 2 weeks have been structured at wakeup, naptime, and bedtime. It has been easy to distract her with the alternatives during the day. To be honest, I’ve missed the random snuggles in the middle of play time or after a tantrum when nursing would calm her and make her so cuddly. But I’m hoping the sacrifice helped to make the transition more gradual and palatable. 

There were also some subtle changes to nursing through the night in the two weeks leading up to now. I worked on the Pantly Pull-Off (from the book, No Cry Sleep Solution) and tried to get Avery to finish nursing and fall the rest of the way to sleep rocking, instead of sleeping on the boob. For several nights, I tested whether a cuddle would suffice to replace milk at wakeups (but never said “no milk” because I was saving that for the actual weaning). 

Weaning from nighttime breastfeeding… the excruciating decision

I have loved breastfeeding. Avery has loved it. We have had such a lucky go of it. I always imagined I’d continue on-demand breastfeeding until Avery self-weaned. I was prepared to continue beyond her second birthday. But here I am, with a 15 month old, starting down the path of slowly weaning. For now I intend to keep 3 nursing sessions a day – wake up, nap time, and bedtime. But everything else is coming to an end.

The biggest influence was a combination of trying to protect my wife’s feelings (hear me out) and a hope that weaning would improve sleep.

Protecting my wife’s feelings is a complicated issue. My wife supports breastfeeding. She understands its benefits to the baby – to a point. She understands it as having nutritional benefits, but doesn’t agree with using it for comfort beyond a certain age. That age has turned out to be 1 year. She’s a big proponent of teaching independence.

However, it’s more than just my wife’s opinions at play here. It’s her emotions. It’s the fact that she struggles to feel like an equal parent. And because that is such a sensitive subject in families like ours – where one parent is genetically related and another is not – I feel the need to adjust my natural inclinations for mother-baby bonding and open up our bond to include my wife. I need to take some responsibility for bringing my wife into the loop, and for us, at this point in time, that means reducing MY importance as a parent over and above my wife. The only way I can think to do this is to slowly start the weaning process.

This whole idea came about because of night time routines. My wife wants to help out when Avery wakes a thousand times a night, but Avery would hit her in the face and scream and call for mama (me). She knew that as soon as I entered the room she’d get to nurse back to sleep. I was a human pacifier. I was ok with that. But I was preventing my wife from being able to pacify her.

More than that, I was exhausted and NEEDED my wife’s help at night. For the last 3 weeks I had felt nauseous from exhaustion to the point of not being able to eat dinner. Some days I’d just lay on the floor while Avery climbed on me and I’d feel like such a useless parent. I knew things needed to change. I had hoped they’d change on their own, but I couldn’t wait it out any longer. While it used to seem attainable to get up all night with Avery until she figured out how to sleep on her own at 2, or even 2 1/2 years old, I just couldn’t stomach the thought of being this exhausted for that much longer.

So my wife and I came up with a plan. It’s a gentle sleep training method that works for both of us – hopefully all three of us. Phase one is to eliminate nighttime feeds, cold turkey. I will still nurse her to sleep at bedtime and nurse her during morning cuddles in our bed anytime after 5am. I am NOT ready to completely wean. These feeds are very important to me.

My wife will take wake up’s up till 1am, I will take 1 to 5am. I will wear a crew neck shirt (wish I owned a turtle neck right now…). We will rock her back to sleep. No milk. We will offer her water if she is persistently asking for milk.

Phase two is about teaching her to fall asleep on her own, no rocking. I’m not ready to get into that yet. It’s too overwhelming. But this is our starting point. My hope is that she’ll have less reason to call us in when she wakes when she knows she won’t get milk.

Just as I documented the floor mattress adventure in a daily log, I’ll document the night weaning process here for anyone who wants to follow along (and offer support!).

At the time of publishing this we’ve already completed one night of this new program. I’m delaying posts by a day or two so I have time to process everything.