The Quest for Sleep: One Mom’s Story for Getting Her Baby to Sleep
I’m alive!!!! I didn’t think I would make it, but I did!
Exhausted Mom by Halfmoon Jewelry, Flickr, under a Creative Commons license
I have an eleven month old little girl named Emerson who, in spite of the nurses at the hospital saying “you’ve got a sleeper”, turned out to not be much of a sleeper. There are worse stories, but mine is a good example of mixing mom’s intuition, dad’s motivation, and a great deal of research to figure out the best path to sanity.
Our Story
Month 1
Emerson started as a fairly typical baby. She slept for two hours at a time around the clock, waking only to latch on for her fill. I co-slept with her in our bed and my husband slept in an extra room so that he could get enough sleep to deal with life (don’t worry, we slipped nookie in here and there). She almost never cried the entire first month of her life. I thought the situation was quite blissful, particularly because I took the age old advice of “sleep when your baby sleeps” to heart. Clearly something in the mommy brain prepares us for waking up to feed a baby every two hours…but only up to a point.
- » See also: The Great Diaper Debate: Comparing the Environmental Impact of “Eco-Friendly” Diapers
- » Get Eco Child’s Play by RSS or sign up by email.
I had declared myself an “attachment parent” or “Dr Sears Mom” early on in my pregnancy. The attachment parenting philosophy, particularly with regards to sleep, felt most right to me. That said, as we encountered increasingly difficult challenges with co-sleeping, I read books like Babywise and Ferber’s Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems that, in many ways, go against the attachment parenting philosophy. As the months of sleeplessness got worse and worse, my husband and I got to a point that we had to open up to some other ways of getting our baby girl to sleep.
Months 2 and 3
Emerson continued to eat every two hours through the second month, then through the third month and was starting to stay awake for longer periods of time between (which meant less nap time for both of us). Also, by the fifth week, Emerson became colicky. She began to cry from about 3PM to 8PM everyday, and often seemed to be in agonizing pain, screeching and wild-eyed. Seeing her so uncomfortable, crying along with her, and doing everything possible to comfort her from bouncing on the exercise ball, to rocking, bouncing her belly on my shoulder or knees, breastfeeding, walking, and walking, and walking, wore me out even more. Luckily, I had a husband who did what he could to comfort her (in spite of her wanting just mommy all the time) and had not gone back to work yet so could still nap when she did. I still slept with her in our bed at night and often during naps, following The No Cry Sleep Solution’s advice for helping your baby to take longer naps (Emerson often awoke at the 45 minute mark during naps, a common problem).
Months 4, 5, and 6
By her fourth month of life, Emerson had gone downhill…she was waking every hour and, when she was sleeping, she was incredibly restless, thrashing all around. I did some research on “restless sleepers” online and, in reading Dr. Sears’s The Baby Sleep Book, found a section on infant reflux. We started putting Emerson in her crib, right next to our bed, and raised the head of it (we couldn’t raise the head of our bed because of they way it’s built, much to my shagrin). The first night we did so, she slept two, 4-hour stints, completely at peace. As you can imagine, we kept this up. Unfortunately, Emerson never graduated beyond four hours at a time and, by the end of her six month, was waking every 2-3 hours again. Each time, I continued to breastfeed and rock her to sleep and would very carefully move her back to her crib. At this point, I knew I was creating a monster by breastfeeding and rocking her to sleep, but, reality was, it was a quicker fix than anything else in the middle of the night (and didn’t require letting Emerson cry).
Months 7 and 8
Mommy started back to work this month, a daunting proposition with six months of dire sleep deprivation under my belt. As a strategy consultant, I had to at least appear smart. With a sleep deprived, hormone-saturated mommy brain, I was not at my peak. And, now that I couldn’t nap, by the end of my first month back at work, was seriously losing it. At our wits end, but not willing to go the Babywise full on “Cry it Out” route, my husband checked out Ferber’s Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems from the library. We heard it was a softer approach to “crying it out”. Ferber makes several points that stuck with me. First, he talks about the fact that, if your baby wanted to hold a knife, of course you wouldn’t allow it, even if baby started crying in protest because it wouldn’t be good for baby. The idea that sometimes a little protest crying is OK, combined with his firm belief that children need to learn to sleep just as they learn to crawl, walk, and read, made sense. I also like that he accounts for the fact that it would be cruel to leave a child who has been breastfed and rocked to sleep since birth to cry it out alone in a dark room-or to leave them to cry it out alone for hours, period. Instead, his method encourages parents to leave their babies to fall asleep on their own, but check on them in increasing amounts of time, to let them know you are still there and still love them. Baby might still cry, but his/her crying is in protest of not getting what he/she wants (a la the knife example) versus because he/she feels scared, alone, and ignored. By letting baby learn to fall asleep sans boob and rocking (or other parent-provided sleep inducers) you are allowing him or her to learn sleep associations that don’t involve you, thereby enabling baby to fall back asleep on his/her own as he/she cycles through normal night time waking cycles.
Ferber, in his book, provides step-by-step instructions for eliminating feedings one by one before working on getting baby to sleep for longer periods of time. We thought that eliminating feedings would be impossible for a baby who scarfed down 4-5 ounces everytime she woke up, but, to our great surpise, within a week, we had eliminated all feedings without much protest. In the process, we had eliminated at least three wake up times. For a week after eliminating feedings, Emerson would wake up in her normal 1-2 hour increments, she’d cry for maybe a minute and then fall back to sleep. Within another week, she didn’t wake up at those times at all.
After two weeks, we still had one wake up time we wanted to eliminate to get her 9-10 consecutive hours of sleep. When Emerson woke up and cried for us, we followed Ferber’s instructions to gradually increase the amount of time we let her cry. We started with 10 minutes, then went in after 15 minutes, and had a max of 20 minutes that we’d let her cry. She stopped crying before the 20 minutes was up almost every night. After another ten days, we had eliminated this last midnight wake up and Emerson was sleeping from 8PM to 6AM.
The one way I strayed from Ferber’s advice is that I continued to rock and breastfeed Emerson to sleep because, well, I was attached to that part of our day. Emerson seemed to be able to still fall asleep on me, rocking, and, when she went through the normal wake up cycles of sleep, had learned to fall asleep on her own. From what Ferber says, not every baby can do this, but, if you enjoy having baby fall asleep with you at the outset of the night, you might give it a try.
Months 9, 10, 11
We had two straight months of Emerson sleeping 9-10 hours at night, and us getting our sorely needed 8. My how life changed! Silly bickering stopped, we had energy to exercise, we watched movies after Emerson went to bed, I was able to not cry if someone asked how I was doing. Emerson became known as “jolly baby”. Along with regular sleep at night, Emerson also settled into a great morning and afternoon nap schedule, an hour and a half each.
In closing, know that, if you are struggling with getting your baby to sleep, and the wide ranging philosophies for how to do it, you are not alone. Perhaps our story gives you something to try. If your struggle continues
, keep chanting “this too will pass”.
Why is this article tagged with “attachment parenting” and “Dr. Sears”? I’m also uncertain why this is on this blog. There’s nothing “eco” about this article. It’s about a woman letting her child cry it out. Very un-attached and not in line with Dr. Sears at all. I feel very sad that this baby had to cry alone. The knife analogy does not work for me AT ALL. Sleep training has no safety benefit unlike taking away a knife. Allowing a baby to cry alone in a room for increasing increments of time is more like giving the baby a knife and letting him cry because he’s hurting himself.
I agree Summer, and we try to post a variety of beliefs on ECP. Both of my children woke often for the first two years of their lives, but they were in bed with me and were nursed back to sleep. It was really easy for me. When they mostly self-weaned, longer durations of sleep came. I just don’t think most growing little bodies are designed to sleep for long durations. All that rapid growth makes long rest periods unrealistic physiologically, in my opinion. Parents just have to resign themselves to the fact that they won’t ever feel the same sort of complete rest they felt before becoming parents.
Also, when a baby cries, they are communicating with you. To ignore it would be the same as ignoring their speech when it comes later on. Most parents would not think of ignoring a child that asked to be held or hugged or fed with words, so why is crying to be ignored?
Thanks to you both for reading my post and commenting. Summer, I tagged this article “attachment parenting” and “Dr Sears” because my hunch is that there are other mothers out there who believe in attachment parenting and do their utmost to live the attachment parent philosophy but, because of their own circumstances, struggle in the sleep department. Believe me, my husband and I tried everything to get Emerson to sleep. I wanted to co-sleep with her for as long as she wanted to. The fact is, neither she nor I slept well together. Perhaps my presence excited her…the question we had to wrestle with is whether it was better for Emerson to be awake much of the night or restlessly sleeping with me, or, after a few minutes of crying (with my husband checking on her frequently), sleeping peacefully through the night (she hardly changed position). Once she was sleeping, not only did I finally feel sane from countless sleepless nights, Emerson felt better too. She went from being a tired and grumpy baby to a jolly one. I can’t tell you how much I struggled with our decision to try Ferber’s recommendations–it was extremely difficult for me. But, because I was on the edge of insanity and Emerson was exhausted, my husband insisted that we at least give it a try. Emerson and I now sleep peacefully all night long, side by side in separate beds in our room.
I have to agree I was very surprised to find this post on here. My son is almost 18 months old and he has never slept through a night and I have to say I got so used to it that it doesn´t really bother me even though I work. And even on those days I don´t work I don´t need naps throughout the day. I just wonder why some parents think their children should be able to make it through a night before the age of one. I wake up at night so why isn´t this little person allowed to especially at this young age. My son also slept longer periods of time when his little body was ready for it without me “training” him or forcing him into my schedule.
Jennifer, you are so right. Nobody would ever reject a child asking for a hug but it looks like it´s totally fine to ignore crying. How sad!
As a mother of a 14 month old, I can relate to the no sleep whatsoever. We co-slept till Layla was about 8 months old, but suddenly she didn’t want to sleep with us any longer, She would move around and kick us until we put her in the crib and then she fell asleep straight away.
We were the ones who missed her on our bed. Now if we are lucky, we can get her to sleep with one of us in the middle of the night for couple of hours. At one point Layla was getting up at least five times a night, that was excruciatingly tough for us. We did try to CIO after we were so exhausted and starting to fight in the middle of the night because of her getting up every two hours. And honestly she ended up getting up only once a night after that.
However after couple of weeks, we ended up going back to getting up middle of the night to pick her up. We just resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to have to get up in the middle of the night until she was ready to sleep through the night. At almost fifteen months she does sleep through the night most of the time. Sometimes she does whine or cry for couple of minutes but always seems to fall back asleep. You don’t think it will; but one day, your little one does sleep.
I have to say that getting up middle of the night is one of the toughest thing about parenting. I can understand why after months and months of no sleep why some parents resort to CIO method. IT does work. However I do wonder at what expense. While Dr. Sears is very against CIO method, even he admits that a happy mom is a happy baby. So if mom getting enough sleep means being a happy mom.. then maybe CIO is the only way to go for some.
While as a mother of three I understand how hard it is to be sleep deprived and what a challenge it is to help your baby get the best sleep I am always sorry when any form of CIO is seen as a solution. I strongly believe, and a growing body of research shows, that goes against what is best for baby. I think a big part of the problem is thinking its normal for babies to sleep 9-10 hours a night without waking/eating. Its not. I think until parents stop looking at this untrue concept as what they are working towards parents will continue to feel like there is a problem when in fact its just part of life with an infant.
I agree that the CIO method is crule if used for an extended period of time. But there is a happy medium, sometimes you have to let them try to sooth themselves to sleep. Some babies can do it, others just can’t. You have to let them try, though, and the only way they learn is to CIO. But I think that if they don’t fall asleep in a fairly short period of time, the most I would do is 20 min. Then it’s back to rocking and cuddling. With my oldest son it worked at 6 months he would CIO for about ten minutes then fall asleep. He still woke up in the middle of the night for a feeding, and I excepted that. He needed a night time feeding until he was ten months. My second son is totally different. He is stubbern and will cry for as long as I let him. I have to either put him in bed asleep or cosleep for him to be comfortable. Every kid is different, and CIO method isn’t evil if used responsibly, and yes your baby is probably going to need a night time feeding. I don’t expect to get a good night’s sleep for at least another ten months. I just except it.
I agree with Maria. Also, I don’t see how this article fits into this website. It goes against nature.
I just want to say that I wholeheartedly agree with this blogger: each family needs to read and research and figure out for themselves what works.
I was totally against Ferber, after hearing much misinformation about his book about how cruel CIO is. But I read and tried all of Dr. Sears thoughts on it, and while it did help our son (age 6m) to go from waking every hour to waking every 3 hours, I knew from talking to our pediatrician that it is normal for babies his age to sleep 6 hours, or even longer with no problem. And it only got worse–to the point where he would only sleep if he slept with me, though we would both sleep really poorly - he was tired all the time & so was I.
So I urge other parents to read, read, read. There are lots of good books out there. But, putting aside the overly emotional aspect, read the science - its there in Ferber’s book. There is a reason that Ferber is the director of The Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders, at Children’s Hospital Boston. He knows more about the physiological need for sleep in babies & kids than probably 99% of the human population. Throughout his book he stresses patience and compassion and understanding. And he urges readers to entirely evaluate all of the sleep habits/issues before making a choice to try to solve the problems.
Read and educate yourself, take what you can use from the various sources (books, your pediatrician, etc.) and take what makes sense.
[...] Because as a natural parent, when you’re not forcing your baby to sleep through the cry-it-out method, certainly you’re hoping to find something that will stick in their bellies. Or even [...]