Tonight will be the 5th night of a new way of nighttime parenting in the Torgesen household.
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For 9 ½ months now, I have been doing most (99%?) of the nighttime work. My wonderful husband, Lance, has been there for me, though, when I needed it most and understood completely when I just, in the middle of the night with a crying baby in my arms, just hand him over and walk away without saying a word.
In a few words….
End.of.my.rope.
But, time to step up even further.
A new day has dawned. I’m there – at the end of my sleep rope and have realized a few things:
1). Alex isn’t getting ANY better at sleep and is, in fact, getting worse. There are many reason for this, but some could be teething, walking skills, reinforcement of waking up every few hours….
2). The lack of sleep is affecting me quite a bit at work (i.e. missing words in sentences, being in a fog all the time)
3). Although I love having Alex sleep with us, I’m ready for him to sleep longer (hopefully all night), but, if it takes moving him out – I am ready to do this.
4). Through any combination of nurture vs. nature – Alex needs to be touching a person to fall asleep and wakes every 1-3 hours for any number of reasons and needs parenting to get back to sleep.
So, like I said above - - - a new day has dawned.
Here’s the plan: Lance and I split the night. I was going for an every other night thing – but, Lance felt like he couldn’t deal with taking care of Alex for one whole night. Lance takes the first shift to sleep while I take care of Alex from 9PM-1:30AM and then Lance takes care of Alex and I sleep from 1:30-6AM.
I actually have to physically move to another room because me just being there means he will come to me and I won’t be able to sleep, Alex won’t learn a new way of sleeping and Lance won’t “volunteer” to take care of him.
When talking to his pediatrician this past week – she gave me advice on what she did when something similar was happening with her son who also slept with her. She would say to him “It’s dark outside and time to go to sleep – no nursing” and then roll over. The husband would have to settle the baby back down and she said it took about a week of doing this for it to work. Babies at this age understand more than you think. She said that before you know it her son slept longer and learned that it’s not OK to nurse all night and that night time was for sleeping.
I’m also worried about how much sleep he’s getting (let alone how much I’m getting!). Babies at his age should be sleeping 11-14 hours a day between night time and day time naps.
Well, our little mover maybe sleeps from 9PM to 6AM (9 hours) and most of the time takes naps in the car to and from daycare (30-45 min each way = 1-1.5hr) and sometimes 2-3 naps at daycare which seem to be 20-40 min long (40min-2hr). So, this equals ~11 hours on the short side to 12.5 hours on the long side. So, it seems like he might be getting enough sleep but, at night, waking up every 1-3 hours is killing me and can’t be good for him, either.
Little brains need lots of deep rest to grow. And Mama brains need rest to be able to work all day and bring home the bacon.
I’m not mad, angry or frustrated (which actually surprises me!) but I am ready for change. I need change, too. I need to sleep for some reasonable amount of hours per night and need to function better during the day. I need to sleep!
Lance is having to really step up and have some very different sleep than he has for the past 9 ½ months. I think he now knows how I can answer “I don’t know” to the question of “How many times did he get up last night?”
Uncountable.
But, hopefully getting better!
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