He slept, she slept, they all slept…finally!

Today I am so ridiculously excited. For the first time in living memory, Luca slept through the night. This meant that I also slept. Yes that’s right, I SLEPT! Sweet, semi-unbroken sleep. A whole seven hours of it. Bliss!

Along with many other things in my life, this blog has been sadly neglected due to large upheavals and a total, unflinching lack of sleep. So here’s a little back story…

A few months ago I read about a book called The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. Given my previous efforts had all turned out to be the Much-Cry We Will Taunt You With the Long Distant Memory of  What Sleep Was, I decided to buy the book. Actually reading the book ended up being harder than buying it (I still have not finished the novel I started in the weeks before I had Luca and that was almost eight months ago).

Pantley’s book claims to be a midway point between the two major sleep theories – Control Crying or Cry It Out and the absolute opposite, hardcore Attachment Parenting (responding to your baby each and every time they make a peep). This seemed perfect for me as I had tried both and had success with neither.

When I did finally get around to reading the book (after a truly hellish period of non-sleeping) I found that many of the suggestions were similar to those I had read before; create a bedtime routine, keep things calm in the hour leading up to sleep,  good daytime naps equal better nighttime sleeps ect. Where this theory differs is how it brings the ideas of the two opposing schools of thought to work together. Pantley advocates responding promptly, using whatever means necessary (patting, rocking, feeding, taking them into bed with you) to calm your baby down so that they can go back to sleep. She tells you to do this each and every time your baby cries and cannot go back to sleep on its own. In our case this was anywhere from eight to twelve times a night, every night. Once your baby is sleepy (but not asleep) you put them back into their cot. If they cry (which Luca did) you repeat the process again and again until they fall asleep without your aid.

This is not an easy solution. It’s work. Hard work. You don’t get to put your baby into their bed and go make a cup of tea while they cry themselves to sleep. You get up and you do whatever you need to do for however long it takes.

For fifteen days straight I followed Pantley’s advice to the letter and for fourteen nights straight Luca woke his usual eight to twelve times a night. During the day his naps became longer, they doubled and sometimes tripled in length, and it became easier to get him to go to sleep. He was happier and better rested but at night absolutely nothing changed. Nothing!

This was crushing. It felt endless. Sleep in forty five minute snatches is not really sleep, it’s torture. You get to taste sleep but you don’t get to have it. It’s dangled in front of you, waved in your face, suggested as a definite possibility only to be yanked away from you just as you are reaching out to grab it.

That was until last night. Last night I grabbed it with both hands and embraced it fully. I had forgotten what it felt like. I had dreams, crazy dreams. Dream after dream after dream until, I heard a noise, a familiar noise, but it wasn’t the noise I was expecting. It was my mobile. A message from my cousin on holidays in India. Shit! What was the time? Why hadn’t I heard from Luca? Was he tangled in his blanket? Stuck in the bars of his cot? Face down and not breathing? Or, was it just possible he was sleeping? I lasted about twenty minutes before creeping into his room and listening for breathing. And I heard it, soft and steady, and just a little croaky. Definitely breathing. But I felt his chest just in case. A steady rise and fall. Very definitely breathing. Very definitely sleeping.

Now this may have been a total fluke, a once off never again to be repeated, but I am hopeful. I figure if he has done it once he can and hopefully will do it again. It may not be tonight but I’m hoping it’s soon. Was it the book? Was he just ready? Who really knows? But here is hopefully where my investigation ends. Thank you Elizabeth Pantley! Unless of course I post again, in which case, does anyone have the number of a good sleep school? Or maybe I’ll just go back to feeding him whisky before bedtime…

Attachment Parenting gone wrong

There are a couple of things that really put me off the whole attachment parenting thing.

One is people having home births with elder siblings watching. I’m sure these people don’t let their kids watch horror movies, so why let them watch their mother fall about in absolute agony for hours on end, followed by the bloody emergence of their new little brother or sister from their mother’s stretched and possibly torn vagina? Sounds like MA rated viewing to me.

The other is prolonged breastfeeding. And by prolonged I don’t mean twelve or even eighteen months, I mean years. When kids are old enough to pour themselves a drink, surely the boobs should go back to dad?

I seriously hope the whole thing is a massive joke, otherwise Cumbria has some disturbed little kids running around.

One step forward and one step back

Yesterday we had a breakthrough. Or so it seemed.

Luca woke at 7am. He mumbled away to himself in his bassinet for forty five minutes. I got him up. He was happy. I fed him. He played. I gave him his rice cereal. He played again. When he looked a bit sleepy I wrapped him up, rocked him for a couple of minutes and put him back into his bassinet. And he went to sleep…for two full hours!

In the afternoon the same thing happened. He slept. This time for two and a half hours! And when he woke up he was happy. It was something of a miracle. I thought perhaps we’d turned a corner. Maybe I’d struck the perfect balance between routine and attachment parenting?

And then came the night…

He woke up. Every hour or two. All night long.

Maybe he was cold? Or hot? Or had a stomach ache? Or perhaps he was lonely or going through a growth spurt? Or maybe the day before was just so perfect that he decided to jolt us back into reality? Either way, it’s time to find another approach. One that works for days and nights.

Heads will roll

It’s been a crazy few weeks.

We moved out of the place we were house sitting, Luca had his four month immunisations, and we moved in with my parents. Temporarily!

Now I’m not sure which (if any) of these factors caused it, but Luca added to his somewhat skanky current appearance (a disgusting yellowing cradle cap scalp) with a rash that covered his entire face, head and most of his body. He then proceeded to scratch himself silly every waking minute, and while asleep, began to maniacally rock his head from side to side.  To any practiced observer it would’ve been obvious that he was trying to relieve the itching, but to me it looked like he was, in the words of my mother, a few cents short. I spent the next few nights hovering over his bassinet holding his head still, hoping to preserve what brain cells had not already been lost.

What’s all this got to do with Attachment Parenting (which I was supposed to be trialling)? Well, all the head rocking and thoughts of vanishing intelligence (some might question mine) encouraged me to do the one thing AP promotes that I had declared I would never do. I brought Luca into bed with us.

Co-sleeping (or bed sharing) is a big thing in AP and quite a controversial issue. SIDS safe sleeping guidelines don’t recommend it, nor do other subject experts. Tizzie and the other sleep trainers would have a fit over it, and just the thought of it gives me nightmares.

I’ve actually woken at night to find myself shoving my partner across to the other side of the bed, searching through the covers looking for a tiny squashed body.  And he has done likewise. It once took me several minutes to convince him that we hadn’t rolled on Luca and that he was in fact sleeping safely in his basinette in another room. It’s a very freaky feeling.

Needless to say on the night (and there was only one) Luca slept with us, he was the only one who got any sleep. My partner got none because he was constantly being shoved off the bed and I got none because I was constantly shoving him off the bed. In the morning I couldn’t move for a good ten minutes because I’d ‘slept’ the whole night with one arm above Luca’s head, to prevent him going under the pillows, and the other hovering in mid-air across his chest, to prevent the doona from going over him.

My body felt like it had aged about fifty years and my brain was mush. Like mother like son.

So to cut a long story slightly shorter, the pram is back, but I’m hanging on to the sling. Some of the principles of Attachment Parenting have worked for me. I like the softer approach. I prefer to pick Luca up and comfort him rather than leave him to cry. I enjoy carrying him close to me when I am out for lunch or doing the shopping and it’s useful when he is having a crappy day and he won’t sleep. But I don’t go in for the whole co-sleeping thing or the really strong emphasis on the mother as sole caregiver. I will pass that kid off to any family member or friend who looks our way, and I think that’s good for him.

And another thing that bothers me about AP is that every website I visit, every book and every piece of promotional material I read shows images of women giving birth at home with their older children watching. Now that is just weird. And creepy. And wrong. And if leaving a baby to cry is going to mess them up, then just imagine what that’s going to do!

Wearing my womb on the outside

OK, this kid is in paradise but I feel like I’m turning into a kangaroo.

I’ve been baby wearing for the past few days and for the most part it’s been pretty good. I even ‘wore’ my baby to a wedding on the weekend, mind you he cried from about 7.30pm onwards, but that may have been the music.

As Attachment Parenting (AP) requires, I’ve ditched the pram in favour of the sling and Luca seems to appreciate it. Finally I’m getting smiles instead of screams, and as an added bonus I’m growing muscles on my muscle’s muscles. But after only a few days of this I’m not sure where I end and he begins. Maybe that’s the point?

One of the eight principles of AP is ‘nurturing touch‘. Babies should have contact with the primary caregiver – preferably one with boobs – as often as possible, if not all the bloody time. According to AP babies are ‘hardwired’ with a need for physical touch and a baby’s cry is a technique to keep the mother close. This is a vastly different interpretation compared to that put forward by the previous method.

Although the closeness is nice, I have noticed a definite downside. When I leave Luca with my mum (which I’m probably not supposed to do, although she does have boobs) he is more inclined to cry and less likely to go to sleep. Whereas before she barely had to look at him with her ‘You’re no match for me, I have five children and thirteen grandchildren’ eyes and he’d be asleep on the spot.

But there is a plus side to all this baby wearing. Sometime during my pregnancy I remember watching a TV series about different styles of parenting, one of which was very similar to Attachment Parenting. The proponents of this method claimed that by constantly keeping your baby on you, the baby would inadvertently learn how to do things simply by observing you. I’m hoping this is true because if so, Luca has just learnt how to make a mean Rogan Josh.

The baby mafia

In my travels relating to all things Save Our Sleep, I came across a group of passionate Tizzie haters. Each forum had them; women stridently trying to persuade all the enquiring new mums to ditch the routine in favour of a warmer approach. While debate rages on some forums there are others that are ruled mafioso style by these parents who insist forced routines and sleep training do damage to babies.

Seeing how Tizzie didn’t exactly rock our world with her stopwatch and ‘close the door and have a cup of tea’ approach to getting your child to sleep, I thought I’d give the baby mafia (aka Attachment Parenting advocates) a closer look.

Attachment Parenting is based on eight principles. I won’t go into all eight, but basically they encourage the mother to pick up her child at birth (or before if at all possible) and not put it down until it turns twenty one, or gets married, which ever occurs first.

Where as Tizzie took her cues from the fifties post-war stiff upper lip culture, Attachment Parenting (AP) is based on a style of parenting found in less developed countries where communities consist of large extended family groups. In these communities children sleep with their parents until they are quite old, babies are almost always carried (known today as baby wearing) and leaving a baby to cry would be unheard of.

My partner was brought up in this manner, and while he has his quirks, he’s not totally screwed up. And who knows, maybe there will be some kind of genetic trigger that will be set off in Luca and he will suddenly start sleeping 8 hour stretches. But then I’m pretty sure I was brought up with a touch of the ‘let them cry it out’ method and he didn’t take too kindly to that.

Well, he does look a lot more like his dad than me so here’s hoping!