Baby sleep and sleep training: Part One
By ella | September 1, 2008
Edward is now an irresistible five months old. I adore everything about him. From his shy smile to his chilled personality to his feisty boob-bashing hand, he is already the minature version of his adult self. Or at least that’s what I like to imagine, because he is so perfect. Right from the word go he was easy: he spent his first week and a half asleep allowing me to entertain endless visitors, he slept through his baptism at five weeks even when he was partially drowned by the vicar, and he regularly slept three, four and five hour stretches at night as a newborn (which is quite manageable for a sleep-deprived mother, at least for a little while). He’s had a few problems along the way: he has had physiotherapy for weak neck muscles and he’s also had a urine infection, followed by chronic constipation giving me minor worries as these were the beginning signs of Ben’s failure to thrive. But the most perfect thing about him, probably the one thing that may have prevented me from suffering post-partum depression and also my biggest secret about him is that he slept through the night from eleven weeks old. And when I say slept through the night, I mean really slept through the night. Twelve hour stretches. Perfect baby indeed. I was the most well-rested new mama of anyone I have ever known.
I consider it payment for six years of hard labor looking after small children.
Unfortunately the encroaching wrinkles paid no attention to the fact that I was drunk on sleep and continued their advance, eliciting comments like ‘oh, you look tired Ella’ and ‘not getting any sleep?’ from friends. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them the truth because, first of all it sounds so smug to boast that your baby is a fabulous sleeper, second, mothers of non-sleepers want to smack you about the face - very hard - and, third, to tell them the truth would be to admit that the wrinkles are actually all mine. So I kept quiet.
Unfortunately, the downside of these marathon nighttime sleeps were that he never slept once during the day. Not even for a second. Except perhaps secretly while he was feeding and I’d look up from homeschooling and find that he had been on the boob for two hours. Yup, maybe then.
But there was no way, absolutely no way, I was going to start making him nap because you don’t mess with a newborn that sleeps for twelve hours every night. (This was the time he had the urine infection so that may have had something to do with why he was sleeping so long. A few weeks later his wee started to smell again and I’ll admit it did cross my mind - just fleetingly - not to hurry to get it tested because of the possibility of returning to those beautiful coma-like nights. Bad mother.)
Sleep training and I have form. Harry was a terrifically bad sleeper, partly due to reflux and also partly because I evidently missed the bit in the baby care book which said you should treat the nighttime feeds and changes with dark and quiet to help your baby to learn to be sleepy during the nights. Harry and I would be downstairs watching TV while he fed, making cups of tea in the kitchen and changing dirty diapers in the brightly lit bathroom. No wonder the poor boy had no nocturnal skills.
Again, bad mother.
We tried controlled crying with him when he was about nineteen months when I was almost dead from exhaustion. It was the most horrendous thing I have ever done and it didn’t work. Terrible times. We tried it again when he was nearly two and it worked quickly and without too much distress on either part. I still don’t know what made him ready then, when he wasn’t before. All I can say was, I am glad I had already had a second baby by that point - an easy, second baby - otherwise Harry might have been an only child. (Just kidding, Harry, if you’re reading this.)
I learnt my lesson about sleep and number two came along, my cosy, sucky William, and he was a fantastic sleeper. I’m going to take all the credit for this - even though it was just his personality - because I’m his mother and I can. No need for any kind of sleep training for him. Also he shared a room with Harry from six months old and they both went to bed at the same time which may have made it easier for him to settle than if he was on his own and we had a strict bedtime routine.
Both are now fantastic sleepers bar the odd nightmare.
Then Ben came along. My poorly, failure-to-thrive baby. At six months I was struggling to get him to go to sleep alone in his cot or get him to sleep through the night even though we had quiet, dark nights and a bedtime routine. He co-slept for several months and then slept in his crib next to my bed where I found it quick and easy to settle him at night. The downside of this was that I had to stay with him while he went to sleep - easy when the older two were at pre-school, not so easy at other times. Because he was poorly, he didn’t start sleeping through until fourteen months. At fifteen months I did controlled crying with him. It took one night. He too is now a fantastic sleeper (if you don’t counting teething waking and spider fear wakings).
So I can do it - teach my children to sleep. But I’m too soft, I know I am but I can’t be any other way. I can’t put them down as babies and let them learn to settle themselves. And so the hardest, absolutely hardest, thing for me about having a baby is dealing with sleep problems and sleep training.
You know where this is going, don’t you?
Recently Edward has started waking at night. A lot. (Not so perfect baby.) And the wrinkles are chiselling deeper into my face after each terrible night. And so I’m now faced with teaching him to fall asleep in his crib before he can really keep himself awake. To say I’m dreading it is the understatement of the year. Having needles stuck up my backside is going to be more fun. I’ve read all the sleep books: The Ferber method, The Pantley No-Cry Sleep Solution and everything in between. Most of the sleep gurus agree that controlled crying should not be done under six months, I have never had any success with controlled crying with babies and it doesn’t suit me - all that emotional distress in a young baby and even more emotional distress in me. So no controlled crying. Instead, I’ve opted for rocking him until he is almost asleep and then putting him down in his cot while he is still awake but beyond the point of being able to keep himself awake thus teaching him that it’s okay to fall asleep on his own in his crib. That’s the theory. In practice I’m thinking do I have the time and patience to do this twenty or more times each evening at bedtime and twenty or more times twice a day for naps AND even if he learns now, will he keep that skill when he is able to keep himself awake and still settle himself? He has a muslin comforter but it’s not me (nor, more importantly from his point of view, my boob) - will that, a cuddly bedtime routine and some sleep training from me be enough? I want to have a positive attitude that it will work, but I don’t feel at all positive about tackling this.
So does anybody have any tips? Anything that worked for them? Has anyone done controlled crying under six months and if so, how long did it take to work?
I need help to get this right. Think of my wrinkles.
**********
If you’re a blogger, have you got a sleep training post, either current or in your archives, that I could link to at the bottom here for other mothers in the same predicament? Two of my most visited posts are the two above, detailing how I tried to sleep train Ben (one visitor came to those posts this week after googling ‘can a baby die from crying’, which made my heart break). I’ll be trawling the internet to add links here as I find them. Let me know if you have one to add.
Subscribe Via Email
Subscribe Via RSS
Leave a comment:
11 Comments »
Read More:
- Sleep Training
- Teaching a baby to sleep by himself
- The first week with a newborn
- I slept so long I may almost have had a dream
- When will my baby sleep through? When?
Ass Botox and anal fissures
By ella | August 22, 2008
There is no way of putting this politely. Despite a near-perfect birth and a pretty perfect baby, I have another not quite so fun legacy of my recent childbirth experience: my backside is in bad shape. For those of you who know me personally I’M SO SORRY TO SHARE THIS WITH YOU and please feel free to stop reading right now. But - I write about the truth about motherhood here, not some glossy, sanitised, media-type version of it and today it is all about what childbirth can do to your ass. Or more accurately, to my ass.
The pain ‘down below’ after delivery can be, for the uninitiated, quite shocking if you’ve had any kind of trauma to your perineum, including to your labia or sphincter, or if you’ve had a tear or episiotomy or had an assisted delivery with a ventouse or forceps. This time I had a tear and some pretty shocking piles so I wasn’t surprised to be in quite a bit of pain for a couple of weeks. Then the pain subsided but not the pain in my ass so I was prescribed some better suppositories. The post-delivery bleeding subsided but the toilet bowl would still be full of blood after every bowel movement. And, holy crap, if it didn’t feel like I was shitting broken glass. Still, I persevered, because I’m a mother and that’s what we do. Also I was kinda busy what with four children and I was lucky if I got so much as thirty seconds to myself. There was, quite literally, no time to worry about my behind. Except how big it was getting what with all that sitting around breastfeeding. Eventually, after about four weeks, I took a look because I could not bring myself to do so sooner unless it was absolutely necessary. The whole area was ulcerated and weeping and bleeding. There were things hanging down, and out. There were tears in the skin. I honestly recoiled in horror.
So I tried barrier creams which helped a bit but then after a couple more weeks everything down there started itching. I treated myself for thrush. The itching got worse.There was no way round it - I’d have to visit the doctor. Having been through the indignity of childbirth four times you’d think it’s hardly like I have any modesty left but actually the opposite is true. The labour midwives don’t expect to see anything but your fanjo and butt. But your average GP/doctor probably hopes for a patient with a mild, lingering cough or, at worst, a mute but scabby child. Present them with the pleasure of having to examine your ass on an otherwise pleasant Tuesday morning and most will shudder inwardly as they don the latex gloves.
But I went, and my very lovely doctor poked and prodded (ouch) and referred me to the colo-rectal department at the hospital. Now there’s one department I hoped I wouldn’t need to see until I was seventy and needing a colonoscopy or some other such lovely age-related ‘procedure’. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the Sister in Charge at the department was called Sister Fee.ly. Luckily I had the baby with me as sufficient distraction from the thought of where Sister Fee.ly’s hands would shortly be.
So I had an examination and a camera stuck up my bum and a discussion with the incredibly nice consultant whom I could hardly look in the eye. I have ‘large and varied’ skin tags which need to be removed. I have anal fissures which need to be repaired. I have piles. I have a sphincter which needs ‘attention’, as he kindly put it. And I have skin which is very fragile. So fragile he may not even be able to operate.
But the plan is that, in a few weeks, he will stick needles where the sun don’t shine and inject me with Botox to deal with the sphincter and remove the skin tags and these things will hopefully stop the leakage which is causing the itching and ulceration and pain.
And then when all that is done I will be referred to Obs & Gynae to deal with a whole set of other problems, including the need for a non-cosmetic labiaplasty and more itching.
When I’m done I’m going to look like a million dollars in all the places where it doesn’t count.
********
So tell me, what has pregnancy and childbirth left you with? Leave a comment or link back from your own post. Other mothers (by which I mean me) need to know they’re not alone.
(picture from jilbean3 on flickr.com)
Subscribe Via Email
Subscribe Via RSS
Leave a comment:
9 Comments »
Categories: All Gone Wrong, Pregnancy
Read More:
- Four week old baby and I’m slightly obsessed with boobs
- Thirteen weeks pregnant: ante-natal and post-natal depression
- A birth story: how the horse and I bonded
- Thirteen weeks pregnant: birth stories
- Taking the concept of sharing to a new level
A farm by season
By ella | August 20, 2008
My beloved dog, Defa, died six months ago today. I haven’t been in the field where I walked with her every day even once since she died. I watch the changing seasons, revelling in their beauty, and always with the thought of how Defa would have loved the farm fields as they changed.
Nature is right at our door. Our garden backs onto fields stretching as far as the eye can see. After the dank, miserable winter, springtime holds the promise of the beauty to come. Cool mornings, dewy crops: heaven for a dog (that’s her, that little brown and white speck in the distance - yeah, I can hardly see her either).
Then summer arrives and this is our playground.
I’m thinking we should go into the opium business.
The days pass and the fields turn gold. When they’re like this they embody everything I love about living here.
Last week the combines came, working night and day for nearly a week. It was a cheap week for entertaining the boys because the farmer took care of that for me.
Now we are left with the fields and fields of haystacks. And two daredevil boys that are determined to fall off the top of at least one.
And then the cycle of growth will start all over again.
There will be no dog running with me this year, revelling in the golden wheat and the rape fields full of deer and rabbits. I probably won’t even be here to see the spring crop start to grow, to watch the wheat turn slowly golden, or be here for the next harvest. It feels like nearly all my memories of her are encompassed in these fields. Leaving them will be hard.
Subscribe Via Email
Subscribe Via RSS
Leave a comment:
4 Comments »
Categories: Country Life, Dog Days
Read More:
- Massive dose of anaesthetic
- Even the house aches with emptiness
- As if the last year hasn’t been bad enough
- Blame, sorrow and grief
- In which the grief is compounded
Birthday Botox
By ella | August 14, 2008
I’m approaching A Birthday.
One I am trying to be cool about but that actually feels like the slippery slope to middle age. I am cool about it, it’s just my dreams that unlock my subconscious and tell me otherwise. Dreams where my whole family turns out to celebrate and I send them all away. ‘Cause in my dreams I’m fun like that.
I paid a little visit to the hospital yesterday and I am now the proud owner of an appointment to have Botox. Just before The Birthday.
If I told you that the two were unrelated you probably wouldn’t believe me.
Until I tell you that the Botox is for my ass.*
**********
*More details about this forthcoming. I bet you can’t wait.
Subscribe Via Email
Subscribe Via RSS
Leave a comment:
No Comments »
Categories: Daily Life
Read More:
- Happy birthday to me
- I Got Me My Very Own Revolution
- Doctor Couldn’t-Care-Less
- My little forward-planner
- Top drawer secrets
Eyes on the sky
By ella | August 7, 2008
Last weekend we went to the Music in the Air family day. We sat in the blazing sunshine getting heatstroke and dehydration. We ate smoked salmon sandwiches and strawberries because we were pretending to be posh. Some of our party drank until they were no longer upright.
The children had the most fantastic time. It was the first time they had seen the Red Arrows and they stood transfixed as they did their display. There were plenty of other air displays too but I found they were apparently simply a cunning distraction so that I wasn’t looking when the boys decided that they would run off. Again. Because there’s nothing like losing three small children in a sea of 20,000 people.
As we were driving home Harry told us that he no longer wants to be a pilot. I asked him what he wanted to be instead. A wing-wanker, he replied.
He meant wing-walker of course - he’d misheard me talking about it at the show - but I can’t help thinking that his word is perhaps just a little bit more expressive. By which I mean accurate.
Subscribe Via Email
Subscribe Via RSS
Leave a comment:
No Comments »
Categories: Playtime
Read More:
- I feel so good, it feels like pay day used to
- The great escape
- God and the little devils
- Happy Birthday to Me
- Musikmesse