I was going to to give this blog post a more positive title, but alas, we had kind of a rough night last night.
Sleep has been a struggle in the Pressprich household since this baby’s birth. Gianna, like her father before her, has never been a great sleeper. When she was very tiny she hated sleeping on her back, would only fall asleep if swaddled very tightly and snuggled right next to me. We found our groove co-sleeping, and it worked well for us, for awhile. Then we hit a period (read-months) when she wouldn’t go more than 2 hours without waking up, most nights it was closer to one. She wasn’t hungry, didn’t want to nurse, just wanted to make sure I was still right next to her and was awake too. If I moved or rolled away in the night, she would quickly awaken. Mark and I thought this might change once I was home during the days with her, that the night time wakings were her way of making up for lost time with Mom, but alas, it only got worse.
We tried all of the sleep methods I have heard of- pick up/put down, falling asleep with Mom and then transferring her once asleep, putting her down drowsy but awake (seriously, does this work with any child? I mean honestly, this little one pops up wide awake as soon as she is put down in the crib, no matter how drowsy she was a moment before), Dad running the bed time routine, wearing her down to sleep in a wrap or Ergo, etc, etc, etc. NOTHING works. She just cried through it all and no progress was made. It is as though she does not want to miss one single moment of awake time. She seems to absolutely hate to fall asleep.
We’ve recently discovered that Gianna will sleep longer periods at night (3-5 hours at a clip) if she falls asleep entirely by herself. Meaning that after our bedtime routine- nursing, clean jammies, diaper, books, and Be Thou My Vision (which was the hymn we sang to her in the womb, she loves it and is soothed by it still)-, she goes into her crib, we say goodnight and walk out of the room. What proceeds is a varying amount of time spent crying until she finally falls asleep.
If Mark or I are in the room when she is trying to fall asleep, she cries for longer and harder because we’re there but not holding her. So we’ve had to resort to just talking to her through the baby monitor at timed intervals with soothing words. Eventually, she falls asleep, and then miracle of miracles she stays asleep. Its a huge change!
Most nights for the past couple of weeks, she’s been sleeping for 2 five hour stretches- a big difference from waking up every hour and needing me to help her fall back to sleep. During the five hours she’ll wake up a little bit and then put herself back to sleep, which is an even bigger miracle. We are making progress, but I hate that it needed crying to do it That was never my plan. I read books like The No Cry Sleep Solution and scoured internet resources for tips on how to get persistent babies to sleep. But none of them seemed to work. I even read a line on one of the sites that their method “would not work with persistent children.” Yup, that’s my daughter.
Sleep has been one of the many areas in parenting that I’ve had to give up my plan for what it should look like. My Montessori training has certainly come in handy as it taught me to sit back and observe the child before acting. It helped me realize that what I thought should work to helpd Gianna sleep wasn’t really what she needed. She needs quiet and alone, which means, as heartbreaking as it is, I need to step back and let her have it. It breaks my heart to hear her cry, but if its what helps her sleep, then I need to be strong through it because what’s best for her is most important. And this seems to be it.
And the crying has certainly lessened over the weeks. The past few nights (barring last night when she woke up incredibly angry 3 times in an hour) its been only a couple of compulsory fusses and then she puts her head down and we don’t hear another peep until 2 or 3am.
It has changed our world. I am feeling less like a walking zombie during the days, and Mark and I actually have some non-baby quality time in the evenings. Sure, he spends most of it studying, but I can sit next to him on the couch and read or watch tv (freedom, sweet freedom). Sometimes we even have adult conversation. It’s amazing.
