Sleep, Baby, Sleep

The other night Tommy awoke at 11:30pm, ate a nice big meal, pooped, and then stayed awake, happy as a clam, until 3:30am. To say I dislike the nighttime poops would be an understatement. The night dookie happens at least once every couple of weeks with corresponding full-awake status. It makes me very tired. Also an understatement.

Then there's the matter of the frequent nighttime feedings. Tommy likes to eat. A lot. Betcha didn't guess that by looking at him :). And he likes to be soothed. A lot. What baby doesn't? The green binky is OK, the thumb will do sometimes, but his favorite pacifier is me. Good for the relationship, bad for the zzzzz.

And whenever Adam and I went to bed it would wake Tommy up, usually just a bit so he goes back to sleep when I feed him, but it pulls him out of deep sleep which I think makes him wake up more often throughout the night.

So we've begun the transition from the Snuggle Nest that resides in our bed to putting Tommy to bed in his crib. Right now it's just naps and the first part of the night until his first wake-up that he's there. Once he wakes up, almost like clockwork around 11:45pm, I bring him back to our room.

This transition makes me go boo hoo hoo!!!

I love having Tommy in my bed with me! I miss his little body snuggled in close and his little tender sleeping face next to me. Call me lazy, but I love not having to get out of bed when he is hungry, being able to doze off when he eats, and sliding him back into his bed when he's done so I can just roll over and go back to sleep myself (unless I've completely fallen asleep while feeding him, and then he just stays there in my arms until the kink in my neck or back wakes me up--believe it or not, I don't mind it at all!). I love our sleep snuggles. I love cherishing this time together because it all goes so fast. I love the quiet hours in the dark we spend together, when it's just him and me, the world around us fast asleep.

But I also recognize that he will be a happier sleeper and a better sleeper if he's not disrupted by us. And maybe if he is eating less in the night, the frequency of the night poops will also decrease. And consequently, so will the nighttime awake marathons. That will be good for us all.

I don't know. This is one of the hardest parts of infant parenting for me.

We never planned on being co-sleepers with our babies. It just kind of happened. Right from Zach's first night home from the hospital with us. It felt right. But when Zach was a year-old, we had to move him into his own bed because the three of us were sleeping in our little double bed and he was head-butting us in his sleep. OW!

Trying to get him moved out was a nightmare. He would cry and cry no matter how I rocked him and soothed him. After about a month, when he was crying ceaselessly anyway, I reluctantly agreed to Adam's suggestion to let him "cry it out." I read all the books, finding the method I felt best about and we went for it. That first night, I sat outside his door, listening to him scream and cry and call "Mamama!" and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed right along with him. We did the interval comforting method (Ferber), it took until the 45 minute check before he finally stopped, that's around an hour-and-a-half of crying! When we checked on him after we were sure he was asleep, he was slumped over in his crib, sitting up, clutching the rails of his crib, heaving deep shuddering breaths. I was heartbroken. It was all I could do to keep myself from sweeping him into my arms and hold him all night long. Adam had to really encourage me to give it another night. But we did. And that night, mercifully, he stopped crying after the 10 minute check. The next night it was just a few minutes. But I was terribly scarred by that first night.

Ever since that experience we have continued our co-sleeping with each of the boys, but we move our babies out much earlier in their lives and naps after four months are always in the crib. We've still had to let the boys "cry it out," but never until they are around a year, when they are weaning and still waking a lot at night. That's a different kind of crying, it's more annoyed and complaining rather than pure devastation. Trust me. And when they are used to their own beds for naps and part of their nighttime sleep, the crying to sleep is so much shorter and less awful for ALL of us!

So here we are. It's Tommy's time to start napping in his crib. I have a hard, heartbreaky time moving my babies out. But I do think there comes a time when it is best for them, even if it sucks. So the Snuggle Nest has been relocated to the crib, he goes to sleep after a nice meal, sleeps swell, and I feel sad. But Tommy's been napping for three hours now, so I suppose the proof is in the pudding. Love you and miss you, darling boy!