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…

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.

Or was that the baby torturer?

The past week has been rough.

I have tried to follow Tizzie Hall’s routine to the letter. When Luca has woken up at 6am I have fed him, burped him, rewrapped him and put him back to bed. Then twenty minutes later, as the book demands, I have woken him up, fed him again, burped him again and attempted to keep him awake until his next scheduled sleep.

Tizzie claims that by doing this my baby will stop waking at 6am and learn that 7am is when he is supposed to wake up, and so on throughout the day. Well, it hasn’t worked and it is starting to remind me of sleep torture, where prisoners are repeatedly left to fall asleep before being instantly woken up again. I wonder if this makes them highly punctual inmates?

I guess if I persisted with the routine for long enough Luca would eventually figure it out. Either that or he’d tell me all his innermost secrets. But the real killer with this book is the fundamental assumption that you are able to tell what type of cry your baby is crying. I can only speak for myself, but this being my first baby I have no freaking idea which cry is what.

What I do know is that for as long as I can leave him, Luca can cry. One day he cried for an hour straight before I gave in and picked him up. It sounded like a protesting cry, which Tizzie says should be ignored, but surely leaving him for that long had to be unhealthy.

It seems that opinions on Save Our Sleep (and other similar books) are totally divided. Online forums are littered with comments from the Tizzie lovers and haters. Those in favour of Tizzie claim she has given them back their sanity, those against brand her as a torturer. Some in the later camp even go as far as saying that her methods can cause brain damage, depression and serious psychological damage.

While I’m confident Luca will make a full recovery from his week at baby boot camp, I have no intention of continuing with Tizzie’s methods. I’ve never been a fan of routine myself.

Not much has changed since 1913

The Plunket Clock

Looks like the routine I’ve been following has been around for quite some time.

The Plunket Clock was a method used in NZ dating back to 1913. It outlines a strict four hour feed, sleep and play routine which virtually mirrors that in Save Our Sleep and many other sleep training methods.

Most of these methods appear to be based on a 1950′s approach to child raising in which the baby is basically an outisider who needs to be trained to fit into the parent’s lifestyle.

Tears, tantrums and a timetable

Luca screaming

This is quite ridiculous. We are all getting less sleep than before and everyone is miserable.

Luca is crying when I put him down to sleep, crying when he is supposed to be sleeping (but isn’t) and crying when I finally give in and pick him up. What’s even worse, he now cries tears. Big fat salty tears that run down his cheeks and soak the sheets.

In addition to this we are all ruled by the timetable. Luca has to sleep, feed and play according to the routine, regardless of whether he is actually hungry, sleepy or in the mood for some good times. I can only go out when the routine allows, which is almost never. And if I misplace either the book or my watch (which I haven’t worn for years until now) the whole day is completely ruined.

I’m looking forward to sticking Tizzie and her routine where they both belong. Only a few more days to go…

The baby whisperer

“It’s all about the routine”, a friend recently told me.

Her three month old baby had gone from waking five times during the night, to sleeping through, in just over a week of being on said routine. This seemed totally miraculous and too good not to try, so the next day I went out and bought the book, Save Our Sleep by Tizzie Hall.

It seems Tizzie, aka the International Baby Whisperer, is something of a baby mind reader, or cry reader as she puts it. She claims to have discovered her gift as a child of nine when out walking a friend’s baby. When the mother discovered young Tizzie’s talent her career path was forged. Years later, after moving to Australia (Tizzie was born and grew up in Ireland), she wrote the book that will, for the next week, dictate my every move.

Tizzie’s method is not for the faint hearted. There is a strict routine to follow including set feed, sleep and play times. Scheduled expressing times (what the?) and even instructions on which boob to use at particular times of the day (is this a joke?).

I get the feeling that this book is going to accompany me everywhere else I’ll have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.

One thing is for sure, there is going to be a lot of crying taking place. Tizzie tells us that it is OK, and even necessary, to let a baby cry (and cry for as long as is humanly possible) so long as it is only a ‘protesting cry‘. If it is an ‘emotional cry‘, and you leave the baby you can, according to the book, “cause psychological damage and stress”.

So, by the end of the week I will have either trained my nine week old baby to sleep, eat, play, poo, wink, smile and frown according to the uber strict routine and without any crying (either ‘protesting’ or ‘emotional’) or I will have caused him serious and irrevocable psychological damage.

I’d be silly not try really.