We Put Avi in the Closet - and It Worked!

5 nights later, we have had two nights of getting up every hour, followed by three glorious nights of a baby who sleeps through the night! Guess the closet did the trick!

(If you want to read more, click here to see my post "Nobody Puts Baby in the Closet" on the Chicago Mom's Blog.)

Mama's Girls

I caught a glimpse this weekend of what my life will be 30 years down the road. Children, in their 30's, returning home sick with laundry and children for me to watch. Yes, I am 34 and I'm still a mama's girl. I woke up with some fluey thing on Thursday, threw all my laundry (including the kitchen rugs) into the car, along with the babies, and headed back home. The entire way I willed myself to stay awake, keeping a close eye on how far the next exit would be in case I had to throw up. 3 hours later, I pulled into the familiar driveway, handed the girls to my mom, and promptly fell asleep.

For all the times I complain that nothing has changed in the house I grew up in (same pictures on the wall, same knickknacks on the shelves) I was thankful for it this weekend. There's nothing better than a cozy home with a mom who wants to make sure you are warm enough, fed enough, and happy enough. I needed that this weekend. Avi has exhausted me, and my body finally said, "Enough!" After some rest on Thursday afternoon, I started to feel better by Friday.

We took a lovely walk on the last semi-warm day, and then made the obligatory run to the mall to pick up a few items. I WISH I had had my camera. In the middle of the sad little midwestern mall with 30% of the shops empty, is a row of cars with a handle for the parent to push their kid around. Totally kitschy and obnoxious. Nourit jumped in the biggest one, a fire engine with two seats, and my mom went to see just how much it cost. $5! (With a $1 refund upon return.) I said absolutely not, and Grandma put the money in anyway. I decided to set Avi in the front and from that moment, the look of pure joy never left the girls' faces. Avi was so excited, steering the big fire engine, while Nourit was in back completely enjoying the ride. Grandma pushed them all over Macy's while I looked for this and that (and never did find what I needed.) She said it was the best $4 she ever spent. If I could have looked into the future 18 years ago on one of those Saturdays I was hanging out at the mall with my friends, and seen this sight, I'm not sure I what I would have thought!

Friday night, though, between Avi and Nourit, I was awake from 12:15 until 6 am. At that point, I walked downstairs crying and handed Avi to my mom to watch so I could at least get an hour's sleep. She didn't wake me, and two hours later, I woke up and realized she'd never make it to work in time. She said it was just fine, called in late to work, then ended up taking the entire day off so I could get some more sleep. The next night, we made a deal, and I handed Avi to her at 3 am so I could get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. Four hours of sleep later, I felt like a newer woman than I've been in a long time.

I returned home full of plans for Avi, poor little creature. Operation Sleep Facilitation for Avi is now underway. Stay tuned for more details of our strategy. Or is that our tactic?

At Some Point...

…she’s got to stop crying and fall asleep. I’ll give her 10 minutes. After 5, I get up and put my hand on her back. Ah, there she goes. Tiptoe back to bed. She wakes up, madder than before. Screaming like she’ll never be happy again. But she always smiles in the morning.

At some point, my maternal gut becomes a detached observer. “I wonder how long she’ll actually keep this up.” “Wow, that’s a new level of crying I haven’t heard.” “Is she going to do this when she’s 10?” All these thoughts while I’m hiding my head under the comforter, just to muffle the crying from the crib 5 feet away. I’ll give her 10 minutes.

4 minutes go by. At some point, the babies in the Romanian orphanage stopped crying. Why do I always think of that? I get up and she immediately grows quiet. She just wants my hand on her back. But I’m tired, and at some point, I need to get some sleep. I tiptoe back to bed. She screams a few more minutes until Mike comes in and picks her up from her crib. “Do you want to sleep with her in the bed?” No. But yes.

I love the feel of her little body so warm next to mine. I love feeling her breathe, knowing she is exactly where she wants to be – next to me. She falls asleep immediately. If only it were this way all the time. There would be no struggle to figure out the best sleep situation for her – for all of us. If she would just be content to lie in between us and sleep, we’d all be happy. But at some point, she stops sleeping and just wants to nurse nonstop. And I’m at the point where I need to sleep. Even a couple hours at a time.

Sleepstarved in Chicago

Cross Posted from Chicago Moms Blog

from August 27, 2008

It's almost 3 am, and Avi is finally asleep after an hour of pacing, bouncing, singing and trying to keep her from nursing on my arm. It's our third night of "sleep training", and since I really feel uncomfortable with that term, let me rephrase that: it's my third night of not nursing her every hour, on the hour; it's my third night of trying to figure out a compromise between what's best for my baby and what's best for me; it's my third night of wondering what kind of mother I want to be, and what kind of mother I actually am.

See, we had it somewhat easy with Nourit. Yes, she did nurse 2 or 3 times a night for the first year, but she also had stretches where she'd sleep for 6 or 7 hours at a time. In her own bed. She'd at least sleep for 4 hours at a time, but it recently dawned on me that Avi has not yet slept for more than 4 hours in a row in the last 7 months, and I think my current record is at 2 1/2.

I have been reevaluating my mothering choices ever since Avi was born.

It suddenly didn't make sense to me that such a small human being should sleep by herself, away from the warmth and comfort that she'd experienced for so long in my belly. It didn't make sense to ignore her cries for milk or comfort, since she was too young for conscious manipulation. All the natural parenting books and articles I had stumbled upon started to make more sense than the regimented, orderly parenting philosophies that I'd been exposed to originally. Even though Avi is not my first child, I feel like I'm learning so many new things the second time around. And I'm starting to question my choices for Nourit. Even tonight, as I closed her door, I felt like she was still such a little creature to be shut away by herself, in her own room. Yet, she has been sleeping soundly through the night and through naps since she was 1, and that's a healthy thing, right?

When we brought Avi home from the hospital, I brought her into bed with us so we would both get more sleep (something we were too afraid to do with Nourit because we thought we'd squish her.) I didn't have the luxury of naptime now, with a toddler to watch, and work to do. And with so many visitors, I didn't want Avi to cry and disturb them. Sure, they were family, but I never felt comfortable subjecting my in-laws to long bouts of a crying baby. Even after borrowing a friend's co-sleeper, she seemed to spend more time next to me nursing than actually sleeping. But my instincts told me she should be kept warm next to me, and allowed access to me at this crucial time of growth. Unfortunately, Mike and I sleep on a Full sized mattress, not even a Queen, so he was soon relegated to the couch.

And now, here we are. I am sleep-starved, Avi has started to wake up hourly, and I'm feeling rather incredulous about the claims of the women in the last two natural parenting books I've read. For instance, how is it possible that one gets more sleep when they have their infant next to them all night? In my case, I'm always semi-awake and sore from posturing around the child so she can nurse, and for some reason, the smaller they are, the more space they take up. We have moved her from the bed to a crib in our room. But over the past week or so, each hour, it seems, her little head pops up like a turtle as she looks desperately over the edge of her crib for her comfort source.

So, I suppose my compromise is to hold my little force of a baby through the crying, just so she doesn't feel abandoned. (Or, more to the point, so I don't feel that she feels abandoned.) I'm not sure how far memory reaches back, but I have so many memories of crying behind closed doors as a child (which I'm sure fueled my depression later on.) I thought this was normal, until I mentioned it to my childhood friend and she told me she doesn't ever remember crying like that. So I really want to be careful to listen to my children, whether infants or toddlers or school-aged, and not have them retreat behind closed doors to cry. Hopefully, little Avi's body will adjust, she'll eat more during the day, and sleep longer at night. And she'll grow and thrive, and not have a lingering sense of abandonment. Hopefully, too, Nourit isn't learning to be "detached" and destined for co-dependence issues later on in life. With the amount of love we lavish on her during the daytime, I doubt that will happen. But those thoughts do cross my mind.

Maybe soon I'll start getting more sleep, too (and not be on the computer at 4am!) Over the past three years, since getting pregnant with #1, I have been continually amazed at everything I didn't know; had never learned; was never taught; about the “natural” act of giving birth and parenting. Some things come more naturally than others, but there is so much that just isn’t clear. (I seriously wished there was a manual when I left the hospital with Nourit, but then I realized that there are actually hundreds of them. Unfortunately, they all give different advice.) Which path do I choose with regard to sleeping/feeding/clothing/etc? Which philosophy suits me and my child, and to what extent? What happens when I change my mind half-way through? Have I completely messed up my child at that point?? Why didn’t my mother tell me how to be a mother??? (Okay, do you see how I can work myself up at 3am?)

In reality, I do know the answer to all of these – there is no one answer. This is life, and life is different for every child, mother, parent. One thing that is the same for all of us, though, is that we all need more than 2 hours of sleep!!

This is an Original Chicago Mom's Blog Post. When Liz isn't trying desperately to get her baby to sleep, she can be found at sulali.blogspot.com.