Project Sleep
M. and I have hit the wall on Finn's sleep. We are officially dealing with our very first parenting issue and our son officially has his first bad habit.
It's the boob. Well, the boob in the context of sleep.
Finn loves the boob. I mean LOVES it. Nursing is a passionate exercise for him that involves a lot of yummy boob sounds and usually some acrobatics. He loves it so much that he wants to have it every single time he wakes up. Okay, except he wakes up pretty much once an hour or more often before M. and I get into bed with him. I spend around 20 minutes nursing him back down, then 30 to 40 minutes later I'm back nursing him down again...and again...and again.... He's started his wake/nurse cycle more frequently over the last couple weeks and he's also been starting to soak through his night dipe.
Time for intervention.
We sat down and talked it through. Crying it out is not an option for us so we needed to get creative as well as united. Would we deny him the boob? Would he get pissed? If I nursed him once we were all in bed together were we being inconsistent? Should we address just the constant nursing back to sleep or try to address that as well as the frequent wakings? WHAT TO DO?????
It took a couple days, and talking to various people, but we came up with a plan. I would nurse him when he woke but only for two minutes. I would then take him off the breast and soothe him back to sleep. Once we were all in bed he could nurse on demand.
We started last night. He woke 40 minutes after going to bed. I followed our plan. He woke ten minutes after the first resettle. I followed our plan. He woke an hour later. I followed the plan. He woke ten minutes later. I followed our plan, but I wanted nothing more than to feed our beautiful boy as he was crying in my arms, his tears soaking my shirt. I knew if I gave in our plan would be useless so I sang to him and rocked him and he did fall back to sleep. And I told him that we were doing our best, and that we loved him, and I cried.
Then he slept FOUR HOURS. He hasn't slept FOUR HOURS in a row for a couple months now
Tonight was easier. He only woke once an hour for the first two and has now gone past an hour. We decided it was mean to feed him those two minutes then jerk the good stuff away, so we're just settling and feeding only if he gets more agitated.
I have hope. Well, at least I have a project instead of feeling trapped by Finn's need to suck on my boob ALL THE TIME. I'm also once again reminded how lucky I am to have such a great teammate when it comes to parenting. It took a few conversations but M. and I found an intervention that we could both agree on.
And right now my boobs hurt because they're pretty full. Who thought painful, moderately engorged boobs would be a good thing.
posted by Sacha @ 10:22 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Oh boy. It's like you just described our life. Loey at six months is waking an insane amount of times and 99% of the time needs boob to resettle. When people talk about how hard it is to be woken every three hours we can't bear it - we'd be in heaven if he woke every three hours! (Lucky our second one is such a good sleeper so far, touch wood.) We are getting so much pressure from friends and family to go to sleep school (where they support you to do cry it out), but we are pretty sure it wouldn't work with our boy, and even if it would, we couldn't bring ourselves to do it. It's so hard having almost no support for a more gentle approach. We're inspired by your post to try again to address the insanity... Please keep posting about how it goes!
I don't know you but I do enjoy reading your blog and I wanted to let you know that we have the EXACT same problem.
We also didn't want to CIO so we decided that we would do anything BUT nurse unless it'd had been at least 5 hours since his last nurse. It's worked pretty well with exceptional nights such as teething etc. He sleeps in his crib until we go to bed and usually now all he needs is a few soother re-loads unless he's having a rough time with teeth.
Good luck. It takes awhile and is more time consuming then just throwing them on the boob which they love so much...but it works eventually.
kudos to you for sticking to your plan. I know a poor, crying baby can foil even the most well thought out plans! yay for sore boobs!
We started dealing with the exact same thing a week ago. I mean, it didn't start to be a problem only a week ago, that was just when we did something about it.
Your nights with Finn sound pretty much exactly like ours with Hugo had been.
For us, the solution seems to have been to move Hugo out of our bed. I miss him, but he has slept SO MUCH BETTER. He has even slept through the night twice, and two weeks ago he was waking at least six or seven times a night to feed.
Last night didn't go well, mainly due to confused-boob-syndrome leading to a big supply drop but I expect when things sort themselves out it's all going to be dandy.
I know you're committed co-sleepers so this may not be an option for you. For me, I am so, so happy to have a contented sleeping baby with no need to consider CIO.
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