It's true what they say...you forget the bad and remember the good. This is the case with us and Gavin's sleep. It's so easy now to forget how much we struggled for almost a year and a half with sleep. It's hard to know where to start, as I have a lot to say about sleep in general. I actually wrote a blog for bebo mia on the topic of sleep, but tried not to get too intense with my personal opinion.
With sleep, we tended to take more of a gentle approach, knowing that it is truly impossible to force a child to sleep, and that all kids are different in their sleep patterns and habits. This was by far our biggest challenge for a long time, and it was exhausting. Looking back, I don't really think we would've changed anything, other than maybe trying more of a variety of methods of getting Gavin to sleep, so it wasn't ONLY nursing (or eventually Daddy bouncing on the ball) that worked. Since we had sleep struggles, I ended up doing quite a bit of reading and research. While there are certain gentle sleep methods some parents may find helpful, I feel I have to say that I completely disagree with any form of cry-it-out or sleep training that involves leaving baby alone to cry. Crying in arms is inevitable, but at least your baby knows he is loved and respected by his caregiver, vs. being left alone to "learn to self soothe". This article reflects a lot of my own opinions on why I disagree with controlled crying sleep training, and I have also liked a lot of articles from Evolutionary Parenting and Dr. Sears' website on sleep topics.
In a (hopefully not too lengthy) nutshell, this is how Gavin's sleep went.
The first week he was home, he slept in very predictable 3 hour chunks through the night. This was a dream and we felt like we had this parenting thing in the bag, no problem. HAH.
We think a lot of his sleep troubles were from being gassy, and he was always very fidgety in his sleep, and was a very light sleeper, so he would wake at small noises, or would probably wake at every change in his sleep cycle. A good night was a 3 hour stretch. One monumental night in Alliston visiting my grandparents, he slept a 5 hour stretch, which was heavenly, and once more around 6 months old, the night before his baptism, he slept 6 hours.
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| Our tiny babe in the cosleeper at 5 days old |
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| Typical daily naps on mama on the couch - 2 months old |
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| Stroller nap in the mountains of Switzerland - 5 months old |
When we got home from Europe, we knew he was too big for the cosleeper so we decided it was time to give the crib a solid try. Gavin had other plans, which included waking up the second we ever tried to set him down in the crib. I was still nursing him to sleep, usually sitting on the futon in his bedroom. Once he was asleep, I would unlatch him, make sure he stayed asleep for a few minutes, and literally inch by inch, try to lower him into the crib. 95% of the time, he would wake before I even got him onto the mattress, and the other 5%, I would be able to set him down, walk out of the room, heave a sigh of relief, and THEN he'd wake up. He honestly never lasted much more than 10 minutes. I think he may have been a bit better in the crib for naps during the day, but I would still usually end up quickly nursing him back down after a short crib nap and holding him for the rest of a nice long nap on my chest while watching Netflix. Hopefully he never had nightmares about Breaking Bad...
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| A rare (and very short) crib nap at 7 months old |
So, during this trial period at night, after he woke in his crib, I would usually give up and take him into our bedroom, nurse him back to sleep in bed, sneak away once he was asleep and put pillows as barricades around the edges of the bed. He would never move too much, aside from maybe rolling over, so we weren't too worried about him ever falling off the bed, and it usually wasn't long before we would head to bed and he would sleep in between us. (*NOTE! If I have ANY advice about sleep, one of the top things I would say is to EDUCATE YOURSELF on SAFE COSLEEPING. It is almost inevitable that you will end up bedsharing at some point, even once or twice, maybe unintentionally, but especially out of sheer exhaustion sometimes, it happens. Where bedsharing gets a bad reputation is from people who are uneducated about doing it safely, and end up falling asleep in a chair or on a couch with baby, which is dangerous. Make your bed a safe place, have both partners on board and bedsharing can be bliss). So yes, even though it is considered safer for baby to sleep next to mom only and not in between both parents, having only a double bed, he would be so close to the edge if he was beside me on the outside, so we felt it was safest to have him in the middle, and he would sleep high up between our pillows, which were so far to the sides they were usually half falling off to give him room. We had been trying and trying the crib at the beginning of the night for a few weeks, before I exhaustedly asked Eric one night how he felt about things and why we were torturing ourselves trying to get him to sleep in his crib when he just clearly wasn't. We had a pretty short, but open conversation about it, and both decided then and there to change our attitude about it, and just be ok with cosleeping for the time being. From then on, I really enjoyed our time bedsharing, and felt that our attitude towards sleep, as well as our overall quality of sleep, was much better once we relaxed and accepted that this was the best arrangement for all of us at this time.
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| Our bedsharing arrangement for most of 3-10 months old (note: my sleeping space is between Gavin and the cosleeper...roomy.) |
I think it was around 10/11 months that we realized just how big Gavin was getting, and just how small a double bed is for 3. Around 8 months old, after bedsharing for a few months, we had decided to try letting Gavin sleep on his crib mattress on the floor in our room. At that time, he was having none of that, so we stuck with bedsharing. We revisited the floor bed around 10/11 months again, and this time, it went much better. We started with naps to get him used to it, and once that was going well, we tried at night. He seemed to be comfortable sleeping there for some or most of the night, still waking as frequently, but I was able to lay next to him, nurse him back to sleep quickly as usual, and then sneak away back to our bed. On the rough nights, it wasn't a problem to just bring him back into our bed, but on the good nights, it was glorious to have more space in the bed, even with the ever-frequent wakeups. By about 12 months, he was sleeping and napping pretty consistently on his floor bed in our room. When we would travel, he had a floor bed set up at both grandparents' houses or if we were somewhere else, he'd just sleep with us.
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| Gavin and Giraffi cozy on the floor bed - 12 months old |
As time went on and we were well past 12 months, we started thinking in the back of our minds about when we would like to consider Baby #2. In my mind, still waking up every 2-4 hours to nurse Gavin, the thought was unfathomable. I knew it was starting to get to me, the exhaustion was building, he was more than content eating solids so he was likely nursing mainly for comfort, and I was just DONE. Around 16 months, after a lot of consideration and some anxiety on my part, we decided to try some very gentle night weaning to see if this would make any difference in his sleep. We started by transitioning from me nursing him to sleep to me nursing him earlier in his bedtime routine, before stories, and then Eric would take over. I would nurse him, we would make sure to say goodnight to milk, and explain that milk was sleeping and there was no milk until morning, then Eric would read stories, and take him into our bedroom and bounce on the ball to put him to sleep (still on his floor bed). During these two weeks, I would still nurse him through the night when he woke, but I would try to keep the nursing sessions as short as possible. Then, one night, we decided to try it for real. Eric put him to sleep, and I slept on the futon in the other room. For the whole night. Obviously I woke up when I heard Gavin, but Eric was eventually able to bounce him back to sleep with pretty minimal fussing, and would sometimes end up just keeping Gav in bed with him rather than trying to get him back on his floor bed. We kept up with this for a week or so, I would sleep in the other room and Eric would deal with any nighttime wakings. Eventually, I eased my way back into the room, starting off the night in our room, maybe escaping to the other room during a wakeup. It was a bit of a struggle when I was sleeping in our room, if Gav would come into bed with us, he would ask for milk, but I would remind him that milk was sleeping and he could have milk in the morning when milk was awake. Some nights were obviously tougher than others, but he adjusted very quickly and very well and....STARTED SLEEPING LONGER STRETCHES!!! Finally we were getting down to maybe 1 or 2 wakeups a night, and he was a lot easier/quicker to settle. It was literally like walking out of a dark tunnel into the light. Getting more sleep and knowing he was getting a good quality sleep as well, was incredible. And almost as soon as I started getting more sleep, I started to wonder why I was still feeling so tired during the day. Yep. Literally a few weeks into our new sleep routine, I was pregnant. Totally worked out in the nick of time, because I was definitely NEEDING the extra sleep!
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| Still likes napping (and nursing) with mama at 18 months - fine with me! |
The next big change to come was my fairly strong nursing aversion during early pregnancy. This was not something I anticipated, as I had hoped to keep nursing at least a little while longer, but the fact that I was getting so uncomfortable and dreading each nursing session resulted in the decision to start gently weaning altogether. Night weaning had gone so well, so around 18 months, we started gently and gradually decreasing nursing during the day, and eventually, sometime around Christmas, all of a sudden, our breastfeeding journey was done. Bittersweet for sure, but a definitely relief for my body, and I think a much needed break before Baby #2.
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As of December 2014, we were still happily room sharing with Gavin on his floor bed, occasionally bedsharing after an early morning wakeup. Then came our move to Oakville, and Gavin's "big boy room". We acquired a queen bed for ourselves, and set our double bed up in Gavin's room (mattress and box spring only) with brand new Pottery Barn sheets decorated with planes, trucks and trains. We wanted to get him comfortable in his room, so we started from night one, putting him to sleep in his bed, in his room. (We also finally stopped using the exercise ball to bounce him to sleep...after 20 months and over 25 lbs, it was time!) Bedtime routine usually includes bath, then jammies and brushing teeth in bed while reading "more" and "more" books. Then lights off, and we will say prayers or sometimes sing or hum to him, and lay with him until he falls asleep. This is similar for naptime, books and then we'll lay with him until he's asleep. When he wakes in the night, one of us will go into his room and usually end up staying there the rest of the night. We have had very few nights with no wakeups, but one or two nights where he's slept through the whole night, meaning we slept the whole night in our bed! That's where we stand now, and it's working great, until all life gets turned upside down with the arrival of Baby in May!
As I reflect back on our long and exhausting journey with sleep, I'm very happy with the way things turned out. We tried different things at different times. Sometimes they didn't work. Sometimes I was afraid to try. Sometimes he'd be sick, or teething, or just going through another developmental leap, and needed more attention at night. And I'm glad we were ok with giving that to him, and responding to his ever-changing needs as opposed to fighting him at every turn to get him to sleep independently before he was ready. I figured this kid would be in our bed until kindergarten at least. And here we are, with a toddler who goes to sleep fairly easily, and sleeps in his own bed, in his own room. Never ever would I have thought this would happen. But it all happened in it's own time, and I'm glad we went with Gavin's timeline and not our own.
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