The Quest for Sleep

From our recent Facebook chats it looks like everyone is having a few sleepless nights; change of weather, babies teething or just babies keeping us on our toes. So here is how we all (try to) sleep (though for Tom this mostly consists of trying to stay asleep while a persistent 7 month old whacks him in the face to try and get him to play).

Since all our babies are a little bit older I will skip the early days of our sleep journey that had us experiencing a few nights of  crying for no reason and one night of continuous feeding, which resulted in a desperate mama seeking out solutions from present hippies, reading up on how early is too early for CIO and the strange and frankly disturbing practice of this guy.

After all this drama and a few weeks where we believed that it was the “Rain - Peaceful and Soothing” white noise track that solved our problems (from an album list that included ”Strong Hair Dryer” and “Mellow Womb”) Frankie settled down to being happy to sleep in our bed with me (early nights for me!). I was really happy to do the co-sleeping thing since we all got a good amount of sleep and night feeds were SO MUCH EASIER. Naps were always decided by her (just don't miss a sleep cue) and try as I might I never really managed to stretch feeds out much longer than three hours apart during the day and her longest stretch was 5-6 hours at night. I did read up on "Eat, Play, Sleep" but I wasn't great at settling her without the calming milk coma so that usually turned into Eat, Play Eat, Sleep. 

Around the 4 month mark after small prompts from my mother (‘you were out of our bed by this stage’) and my husband (‘don’t you think she should be sleeping in her cot now?’ *hint hint*) I started to try and move her in to her cot, in our room, for at least the beginning of the night. She had always napped there, how hard could it be? Well, we picked a good time because it was surprisingly easy.... that week. Then we hit a ‘wonder week’. Screaming and rocking and patting and rocking and reassuring and patting and continued screaming became normal for nearly two weeks. This is when I started some bad habits. 

First rule of any ‘how to make my baby sleep’ advice is PUT YOUR BABY DOWN AWAKE. From Babycentre, to the numerous mama blogs, to the French; all say that getting a baby all the way to sleep in your arms/bed/sling/pram and then moving them to their own cot is a BAD IDEA. The analogy that really resonated with me came from Troublesome Tots:

“Imagine going to bed in your bedroom. A few hours later you wake up on your front lawn. Would you simply roll over and go back to sleep in the grass? Or would you stand up and start screaming? Would you demand loudly to be let back into the house so that you could sleep in your bed? Do you think you would be freaked out by the mysterious force that somehow carried you out to the lawn?”

They go on to say that if this kept happening to you night after night you would start dreading going to bed, always wondering if you would end up on the front lawn. I was, at this stage, either nursing Frankie to sleep or cuddling her until she was asleep, counting to 100 and then sloooowly lowering her into her cot. On a good night she would stir and stay asleep. On a bad night she would wake up straight away and we would start the routine again. 

I’m not sure how long I did this for. At least a couple of months. It got tiring pretty quickly and she always ended up in our bed, sometimes for most of the night. When she was about 6 1/2 months old and I hadn't slept for a couple of nights - due to Frankie's new habit of playing with my face and pulling my hair when she woke up in our bed, coupled with our increased anxiety about her ability to crawl towards the edge and the dog - I decided to turn to The Bible (aka Baby Love) as well as some help from the Troublesome Tots Website and try some tough love. 

I finally set a routine for day time naps. I had always just waited for the tired signs (which, admittedly is the advice until about 4ish months old) but now we needed set naps so that she wouldn’t sleep past 5-5.30 and push her bedtime back. A week away in Adelaide helped us transition into a new routine on the return home. Frankie went straight into her own room (cot lowered due to superior baby standing up skills) and nap times were set. 10am and 3pm became non-negotiable times (or 9.30 and 2.30, or 10.30 and 3.30 - totally non-negotiable). I started putting her in a little sleeping bag thingy to stop her kicking her sheets off and letting her know it was time to sleep. I also really did start pausing before going in her room. She embraced new naps and slept longer and more comfortably. 

Nights were a bit harder. The first night she cried for 5, 5 and then 8 minutes before finally sleeping (I think any longer I wouldn’t have lasted). The next night she fussed a bit and SLEPT ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE NIGHT. We weren’t counting any chickens but we really thought we had cracked it. Since then we have had mixed nights. Some nights she wakes at 10pm and 3am like she used to. Others just the once at 5am, others at 4am and she thinks it’s party time, sometimes she does 7pm until 7am. We are persisting and we are getting more sleep. She still cries some nights and I just have to trust that she will settle herself (which she does).  I sometimes break the rules - it's impossible not to when you hear the cries a little more desperate than normal, and go in to find her standing in her cot, beaming at you because she heard the door, and when you pick her up she clings to you like a little koala clinging to a tree, still smiling, because mama came to get her.