Sleepless in Coralville

WARNING: This post is long, tastes slightly bitter, and is being authored in a zombie-like state. Beware.


So...we haven't been sleeping very well here in the Buchkin household. It's been going on for awhile now, and I think both of us just assumed in the beginning that it was temporary and expected the situation to gradually fix itself...but alas, here we are, 3 months later.

Masha started sleeping through the night inconsistently at 7 weeks, then consistently slept 9-10 hours straight at night from 4-6 months. At six months her second set of teeth started to erupt and she had a skill spurt where she learned to crawl, stand, and cruise all within a month long period. With that, the glory days of unimaginably long stretches (7-8 hours) of sweet R.E.M. sleep came to an end. It seemed to be situationally appropriate, though, so neither of us were too worried. Since then, however, she has been almost constantly teething - she now has 8 teeth total - and has only slept through the night twice during the last 3 months - both after receiving her shots (after which she tends to sleep for 24 hours straight, only waking to breastfeed). She still naps twice during the day for 1.5-2 hours, as she did when she was sleeping through the night.

Despite scheduled Tylenol (when she's actively cutting a tooth), offering a pacifier, homeopathic teething tablets, and following a strict bedtime routine starting at 7:30 pm with a big meal of rice and yogurt, a bath, lavender lotion massage, dressing in a warm sleeper with socks, a book, a teddy bear to snuggle, soft music, and nursing, the only way to get her to fall asleep on her own is to let her cry it out. Some days she cries herself to sleep after 10-15 minutes, and some days she doesn't...and that's when the only option that works is rocking and nursing her to sleep. Same for when she wakes up in the middle of the night. Which means I have not slept through the night for the last 3 months, either. Best case scenario: she is up once, to nurse and change her diaper; worst case scenario: she's up every 2 hours to nurse, and then stays awake from 2-5 am to play, then goes back to sleep until 6 or 7, then wakes up for the day. What kind of night tonight will be is anybody's guess.

My opinion (and I am by no means an expert yet, contrary to popular belief!) is that the night nursing - which I always intended to be a temporary comfort for teething - has created a monster. She has become completely dependent on nursing to fall asleep and has effectively lost the confidence to soothe herself back to sleep when she wakes up. Ilya helps, when he can, but it's difficult since Masha has lost all interest in drinking milk from a bottle. Although it's true that sometimes a sip of water from the sippy cup, a diaper change, or a bit of rocking are all that she needs to get back to sleep, most of the time she won't have any of it until I finally just get up and let her nurse.

Now I think the best next step is to cut off the nighttime nursing completely, but we're big wimps when it comes down to that moment of truth at 2 am...she's been crying for an hour, Ilya's tried all other options, and we know that if I just go in and let her nurse for 5 minutes she'll be back to sleep, and so will we...the prospect of a small snippet of sleep now is a lot more appealing than the possibility of 8 hours of solid sleep some other night who-knows-when in the future.

Medically, I know this is just a normal phase of Masha's development and she eventually will sleep through the night. There may be absolutely nothing we can do but just live through this period of her life and enjoy the extra special time that we spend with her at 4 am. However, I cannot imagine how this will work in a couple months when I start working 80 hour weeks and am not able to get a full night's sleep when I am home.

So I have a request for all you faithful readers who have children of any age - in the comments section below, post how old your kids were when they finally slept through the night for good, and if there are any specific changes that seemed to accompany the transition. (For that matter, Mom and Dad, when did I sleep through the night?) Also, even if you don't have kids, let us know if you have any other advice or see something we've overlooked that might help. Even if you aren't a regular commenter, we want to hear your thoughts (please)!

Click here if you are interested in reading about some of the specific techniques we've tried so far (didn't want to bore you with them in the regular post)...

1. I've read "The no-cry sleep solution" by Elizabeth Pantley and have tried incorporating one of her suggestions called "key words" into the bedtime routine. The technique involves whispering one or two designated key words while the baby is sleepy and rocking or nursing before bed, so that she begins to associate those words with getting sleepy. The idea is that eventually she'll just get sleepy hearing the words alone. We've been doing it for 4 months or so and it hasn't seemed to work, although my patchy consistency is probably more at fault than the technique itself.

2. Another Pantley technique I've tried is to pull her off the breast before she falls asleep, then lay her down in the crib settled and sleepy, but not asleep, so she can fall asleep by herself. This usually ends in 15 minutes of tears (I refuse to let her go longer) and then I give in and put her back on the breast until she does fall asleep.

3. The last technique in the book that we haven't tried is a gradual 6 step sequence to get the baby to fall asleep on her own while the parent is still present, at varying degrees of visibility to her. The first step is to put the baby in the crib and read a book softly or just sit across the room and be present while she is settled and sleepy and can see you. If she cries, you can rub her back and soothe her without picking her up. The other steps consist of moving further and further from the crib toward the door until the parent is out of the room. Supposedly you spend one week in the same spot, then move to another, and by the end of 6 weeks, all you have to do is poke your head in the door when she wakes up and she will go back to sleep. I did try the first step once...I sat in the rocking chair six feet from her bed and she looked at me and wailed for 10 minutes. I did intermittently rub her back, but she failed to calm down. I had to fight from crying myself. It didn't seem very humane to me, so I picked her up and let her nurse again and that was that.

4. I'm also reading "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child," but the author, Marc Weinbluth, is a big believer in the cry it out method and most of his techniques are centered around that...not sure if we'll be pursuing that further than we already have.