Sleep Update

I want to give a brief update on sleeping, and then hope to post soon after about what else we've been up to...Besides sleep training, that is. :)

I wouldn't say sleep training is now a non-issue, but I would say that our life doesn't revolve around worrying or working on Benjamin's sleep. It was a really tough two weeks, and then things seemed to really start getting better. He's still not sleeping through the night - he gets up two-three times. But, he is now always in his bed (except for nursing, but we return in him to his bed before either he or I fall back asleep) - and that is a HUGE improvement! Mostly, because Mark was able to rejoin me - and I can also use as many blankets and pillows as I want! It's interesting, because he was going for a long first snooze when he first started sleeping alone - sleeping from 7 pm to 2 or 3 am. He's back to getting up every 3-4 hours, though. He'll usually get up around 11 PM, 3 AM and 5 AM. Fortunately, he'll go back to bed after the 5 am, and for me, he was sleeping until 6-6:30. This morning, I had to dial-in to a conference call at 7:30, and he slept for Mark until 7:40. We're not really going to do anything about this just now for a few reasons. One is that I'm trying to get away with not pumping when I go to work - which is about 4-5 hours per day. Ben's eating 2-3 meals of solids per day now, so I think he can get along that long without milk. But if I give up his night nursing sessions, I'm afraid I'll need to be better about giving him bottles when I'm gone. I hate pumping. I hate it. And, it seems since we're in the early stages of weaning, I'm not making much surplus milk. It seems like it's harder to pump a decent serving, although he seems to be getting as much as he wants. Secondly, after he nurses at night, Mark can usually put him back in his crib awake, and he'll settle himself back to sleep. Mark doesn't mind bringing him to me and returning him to his crib a few times during the night, and I just have to wake up enough to latch him on and let Mark know when he's finished. So, we'd both prefer this inconvenience to another bought of sleep training. It's so nice to just live right now!

So, that's it with the sleep training. After perusing many books on the issue - I've found that there is no perfect solution. We went through bouts of trying to pick him up/put him down lots so that it wouldn't be a "stressful" experience for him. And we both let him cry it out a few times - although I think the longest I let him go was 10 minutes - when we were just too thoroughly frustrated.

Through all this sleep training, I feel like I know Benjamin and his sleep needs/habits much better. I feel like I know his "window" better for when the right time to put him down. I can better differentiate between his settling-himself-down whining and his I'm getting frustrated and need help settling down. He's gotten to be a good-enough sleeper, that when he has serious problems betting to sleep, I can tell it's not just his normal I-don't-sleep issues, and that something else is going on (constipation, hunger, etc).

I feel like we're enjoying this phase of his life MUCH more, now that we routinely get about 3 hours of nap time out of him in a day (usually spread between three naps, two short and a 1.5 hour nap). It makes me a little sad that we didn't do this earlier, but there really is no way we could have. Mark and I were both too focused on work and stressed out to have gotten through those two intense weeks. And I don't think I could have done it alone - it was hard enough even when we were trading naptimes/bedtimes!

So, that's hopefully our last sleep update (meaning he'll be a good sleeper from now on)... I'll update next on some of the other things we've been doing, and Benjamin's new "tricks"!

Sweet dreams!!