Sleep Saga

When Michael was born I was mildly horrified by the idea of putting him in his crib in the nursery and letting him cry himself to sleep.  For the last four months Michael has been sleeping - when he sleeps at all - either in a bassinet at the foot of our bed or in bed with us.  It made me feel so much better to have him in the same room with us.  If I woke up during the night I could fall back asleep to the sound of his breathing.  When he woke up I could usually get to him before he went from fussing to crying, and I could bring him back to bed to nurse in comfort - or at least convenience.  The two nights (over a month and a half ago) that he slept for longer than five hours at one stretch I didn't have to rush to the other room to check on him when I woke up and realized how long it had been.  At our two month checkup the pediatrician strongly recommended that I stop nursing Michael to sleep and put him down in his bassinet drowsy but awake - but there was no way I was letting him cry himself to sleep at two months!  I told myself that if he wasn't sleeping really well by August when Alex was preparing to go back to school then we might try crying it out (CIO) to enable us to start the new school year well rested.

These last five or six weeks that he has been waking up every one to two hours and nursing for what has seemed like forever to get back to sleep I have been able to doze off in bed while he nursed instead of being up for an hour at a time (usually resulting in him staying in bed with us for much of the rest of the night in a desperate attempt to get him to stay asleep).  But slowly my attitude began to change... and about two weeks ago Alex and I decided that we would try CIO at the end of May when Alex was done with school and we could deal with the possibility of a couple completely sleepless nights (instead of the current mostly sleepless nights for me and partially sleepless nights for him).

That plan went out the window Thursday night when Michael took forever to stay asleep when putting him down at bedtime (for the umpteenth night in a row) and then proceeded to wake up at least every hour.  After spending over an hour trying to nurse him back to sleep at 5:30am and recovering from the ensuing emotional breakdown, I told Alex that was it - we needed a change no matter what it took.  And thus we commenced Operation CIO starting with naps on Friday.

The first nap was not impressive - forty minutes of screaming off and on followed by about 25 minutes of sleeping.  I checked on him every fifteen minutes to make sure he hadn't wedged himself into an uncomfortable tangle in the corner of his bassinet and reassure him I still loved him - although I am convinced that checking on babies during CIO is more to make the parents feel better than the babies.  The second nap was much more encouraging - only fifteen minutes of crying followed by another twenty five minutes of sleep.  While he was screaming/napping I worked in the nursery - thankfully my nesting phase finally hit on Friday (only about five months later than it was supposed to) and I cleaned up and rearranged the room so it actually looks and feels like a functional nursery and not like an incredibly messy storage room (pictures to follow once we get rid of the remaining pile of boxes and hang pictures on the walls - possibly in another five months).  So Friday night we were able to combine CIO with transferring Michael from the bassinet in our room to the crib in his new room.

I expected to go through several nights of Michael crying for hours on end throughout the night, and me crying it out from my bedroom feeling like a terrible mother for not comforting him.  Instead Michael fell asleep after crying for about half an hour, and proceeded to have a night that was, on average, better than he had for the last couple weeks.  When I put him back in his crib after nursing he whimpered and then promptly fell back to sleep.  I was amazed.  It was as if all my prayers for his sleep these past six weeks were suddenly answered at once.  And Saturday night was even better - Michael cried for twenty minutes and then only woke up three times between 8:30pm and 7:30am.  I got to sleep for five hours straight for the first time in... I can't even remember how long.  Maybe two months.  And it was only the third time I've gotten that much sleep at one time since he was born (actually since well before he was born, as I was getting up every two hours to go the bathroom for at least the last trimester of pregnancy!).

So I am absolutely a CIO convert now.  But I am glad we waited as long as we did.  Maybe Michael would have been ready for it before four months, but I certainly wasn't.  I needed these last several miserable weeks of sleeplessness to allow me to have absolute peace that this was the right thing to try at this point.  And that peace is also due to the loving support and encouragement of family and friends - and no thanks to the multiple books and websites I consulted in an attempt to research ways to help Michael sleep better.  The only thing I learned from those websites was that he was (according to the experts on the respective ends of the spectrum) apparently destined to have some sort of complex about sleep regardless - if I let him cry it out he would feel abandoned and hate bedtime for the rest of his life, and if I didn't let him cry it out he would never learn to fall asleep on his own and so would hate bedtime for the rest of his life.  Stupid internet :)

Our sleep difficulties were peaking right around the beatification of John Paul II on May 2nd.  So Alex decided to start asking the intercession of Blessed JPII as the patron of Michael's sleep.  We praise God for the answer to prayers and continue to pray for consistent, adequate sleep for all three of us.  JPII, pray for us!