I want to kiss our pediatrician

 

This summer has been ROUGH in the sleep department. Partly the sunshine streaming in the window until well past 9pm, partly an attachment toddler who wants his mama thisclose to him all.the.time when he’s sleeping, has led to a spiral of sleep deprivation that was just not working anymore. Potamus needed a good 2.5-3 hours of me laying in his bed with him before he would fall asleep. We’d start bedtime routine around 7, and it’d be close to 10 every.damn.night before he’d fall asleep. We tried mixing it up, doing really active things before bedtime routine started (running, wrestling, playing hard). We tried quiet activities before bedtime routine (reading stories, turning off all electronics, warm showers). NOTHING worked. Not only did it take that long to fall asleep, he’d only stay asleep about 1-2 hours at most, and then want Mama. Which meant, in my exhaustion, he was coming into bed with me before I had really even gotten any sleep for the night. 

Now, I’m not opposed to co-sleeping…when it’s working. But his restlessness would continue, even after he was snuggled in bed with me. He’d kick his legs and twiddle my neck, digging his fingernails into my chin…all night long. I would wake up crabby and exhausted and frustrated that it wasn’t going well. 

So I made an appointment with our pediatrician. I thought maybe it was growing pains? Or after a quick google search I saw things like Restless Leg Syndrome, or iron deficiency, or all sorts of other ailments. But I love our pediatrician and figured he’d be able to help. 

His diagnosis: poor sleep hygiene. 

What I love about this guy, is that he has a way of saying things in the kindest, gentlest way, while also sharing about his life. He said that the only way to get Potamus to sleep differently was going to be making the behaviors go extinct, which means, not reinforcing them, which means…not laying next to him for 3 hours to get to sleep. But then he told me that it’s not something I HAVE to do, but told me how to do it, if I wanted to do it, in a way that I would feel good about. And then he divulged that his family co-sleeps, and his son is almost 10 and ‘really small and immature for his size, and he comes into our bed every night to snuggle. he just needs to sleep next to a human being for awhile to feel safe.’ 

Yeah,  my pediatrician co-sleeps his older elementary school age son. So he’s not just telling me to leave a 3 week old in a crib to cry it out. I felt hopeful. He said it’d be hard, but it’d work. 

And so that’s what were doing. We read stories, and snuggle, and I give unlimited hugs. I’m still in his bed until he falls asleep, but I’m no longer laying next to him. And until 2am (ideally around 5 would be best), if he wakes up crying, I go in there and snuggle him, and put him back in his bed, and wait until he falls asleep. The first two nights were brutal. It took him awhile to fall asleep, and then he was restless for a good hour in the middle of the night (aka midnight). He’d fall asleep, but as soon as I’d creep out he’d wake back up. He’d want 4 more hugs and then he’d go back to sleep. 

My goal is not to eliminate co-sleeping for good, just alter it a bit so we’re all getting sleep. Because work starts back for me in 2 weeks, and he can’t be going to bed at 10pm and getting up at 6. He’ll be a crabby zombie. 

We’re at 4 nights this week, and last night he fell asleep ‘on his own’ (with me there) relatively easily. And at midnight he woke up crying, but in the time it took me to pee, he had soothed himself back asleep. I went in there and checked on him…zonked out. He came into our bed around 3am. Already he’s getting more sleep in a row than before, AND when he does sleep next to me there is snuggling, but no twiddling, kicking, tossing and turning. He reaches out to touch me, then curls into himself and passes out. Exactly what I hoped for in our sleep relationship. I like having his little warm body next to mine, but I also like sleep. 

I’m so thankful that I have a compassionate pediatrician who listens to my life and helps create a plan for making it fit into our lifestyle. I feel like I’m able to do a modified ‘cry it out’ (without any crying?) that suits my attachment parenting needs, without going to an extreme that doesn’t feel congruent with my values as a mom. 

So here’s to a few more hours of blissful sleep…for all of us. 🙂

 

Sleep Deprived Thoughts

You know when your kids is super restless and it takes 2 hours to get him to sleep, but keeping him asleep means having his sharp talons toenails digging into the soft flesh of your stomach, rendering you with only 4 hours of sleep, so you cancel your morning yoga class to enjoy a good 3.5 hours of napping bliss while kiddo is in daycare before you head off to get 6 fillings in your mouth, but when you go to take this luxurious nap you lay there for an hour and cannot sleep? At all?

Yeah, it’s not a good feeling. I mean, at least I’m getting to sit here catching up on some lovely recorded TV shows and stuffing my face with MegaStuf oreos, but that doesn’t feel as good as yoga would have. Or a nap. I desperately need a nap. But I will settle for the second best- Mt. Dew at the RoundTable pizza buffet. This is how I survive. One hour to another hour to another hour.

I’ve been reflecting on all of the lovely advice from IRL and bloggy friends on my post: Be Nice. I feel that it took me so long to learn how to give voice to my feelings, having been labelled shy as a kid, and totally fear of rejection and being judged that I wouldn’t talk about what I was thinking or believed in. So when I learned how to use my voice, I unleashed. A damn has broken and I’m not afraid to speak up. But now I get to learn how to…not speak up, in the moment, especially when it might make things worse. I want to explore this more, about the power in choosing when to speak, now that I know I CAN speak, ya know?

So it’s really about this internal experience/perception/reality vs. an outer experience/perception/reality. Like how everything on Sunday went ‘just fine’ with my siter and family, but I still felt internally awkward because of the conflict. Like when I’m in yoga class and the instructor says “straight back” and I feel like my back is straight, but then I look in the mirror and realize that…um…I’m really swaybacked. Like a broken old nag whose given far too many rides to fatass cowboys. Yeah, the difference between how I feel internally (straight back) and the reality (swayback) is striking.

Cover Up Those Boobs!

I’m basically a wreck.

Last night I half-joked in a crazy sleep deprived stupor “maybe if I bash his head into the wall he’ll stop crying.” Boof immediately snapped “that’s not even funny to joke about.”

I know. I know it’s not funny. I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was trying to prove a point that I am exhausted and a sick kid who can’t sleep any way but being held is not helping the matter. I try really hard to be the mom I want to be, but sometimes I just have to admit that I am fucking exhausted. Fucking exhausted.

I don’t know how other nursing mother’s do it, or if their children are just amazing at the whole sleep thing, but Potamus sucks at sleeping. Seriously. He sucks without me, and he’s only marginally better with me present. I read those things about human development and bonding and attachment and psychology and I know that, in the grand scheme of things, I am doing a really good thing for Potamus. But I am also concerned that I am losing myself slowly into a pit of black or white thinking about nursing. It’s been 17 months, over 3500 nursing sessions to date, and frankly, I am exhausted.

I also love nursing. Really love it. Love the bonding time with Potamus and the way in which it easily calms him down. But I need more than 2-3 hours of sleep at a time. Because, there’s only been a handful of times, in 17 months that I have gotten more than 4 hours of sleep in a row. Actually, it’s been twice, and it was one 6 hour stretch (that he slept, I only slept for 5) and one five hour stretch. The only time I’ve napped for as long as I need has been twice, in the past two months. On paper it looks like I’m getting 6-7 hours of sleep a night, but it is so chopped up and full of movement (from room to room) that I don’t think I’ve had a full sleep cycle in a few months. I’m hypervigilant about NOT sleeping, for example this afternoon I barely let myself get sleepy during naptime, because once I started to doze, after 30 minutes, he was awake, crying, and I couldn’t get him back to sleep…nor could I go back to sleep. It’s causing me to be crazy. I literally feel crazy.

So I think about weaning.

I wonder, is it even worth it anymore?

When I don’t have thoughts of dashing my kid against the fireplace, it’s thoughts of running away, not telling anybody, and sleeping in a hotel bed for a week. I’m literally that exhausted. And we’re crazily thinking of having another kid. I just might freak out.

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem..I’m so tired that the thought of beginning to wean in anything other than cold-turkey is exhausting. Putting up with tantrums and slow progression and figuring out alternatives (especially when we can’t figure out alternatives to even food). I read an article entitled 12 Tips for Gentle Weaning and thought there were some really good suggestions. I think I’ve been wishy washing on the whole weaning issue, wanting it to be solely child-led, but I’m wondering if I’m becoming a doormat in this relationship. It’s been easier to just give in then stand up for myself and what I need in a moment.

While I’ve noticed that we’ve cut back some, it hasn’t really been consistent…I give mixed messages, like when it says don’t offer, don’t refuse. Whoa, that’s pretty mind-blowing. I offer all the time, especially at night. I flop down and whip it out. There have even been times when he hasn’t even moved toward the boob and I think “um, what? he doesn’t want to nurse?” Wowzers, I have some things to work on.

And, I had to laugh, at the “cover up your boobs,” (okay, it just says cover up), but holy crumb cakes, a nursling can be triggered to nurse for up.to.a.year post weaning. Wow. I feel that I know so little about this whole process. I guess I just assumed that one day it would just stop…and that I wouldn’t miss it, and he wouldn’t miss it, and bam bam bam we’d be on our way. I guess if it was hard to start, with weeks of struggle and crying and feeling totally overwhelmed, then the end of a good thing is going to be hard for both of us. But I hadn’t even though that what I am wearing could possibly be contributing to him prolonging the nursing. I’ve just been wearing skimpy tanktops because I had gotten so accustomed to needing to whip it out quickly.

But then I also wonder…if he was just a better sleeper…if we did different routines at night when he wakes up sad, would that help? I don’t want to make any rash decisions based on being exhausted…but I don’t think I’ll be less exhausted until I, at least, explore the option of him sleeping better. I just don’t know. I’m all sorts of muddled in the head. I know he’s sick-ish, and teething, and don’t want to just freak out irrationally, but I am so tired. I just want a kid who sleeps for more than 3 hours at a time, you know? I keep hoping and waiting and hoping it’ll happen, but it’s not, and so I think I need to do something different.

Suggestions?

Blackout Anger

When you drink so much that you blackout, that experience where the events that happen the night before are hazy (at best) or absent altogether, you might have a drinking problem. And there is something you can do about it. But what happens when you have sometimes moments of rage that you can’t remember but vague details the next day? How do you stop THAT from happening?

I used to watch crime shows where some defendant in a murder trial would claim ‘I can’t remember anything,’ from the horrible murder, and the audience (and jury) tend to scoff at such assertions. But, while not on the level of murder, I’ve had instances of anger/rage that I haven’t remembered much the next day, which is scary as fuck.

Like, last night for instance (it always happens at night), where I was exhausted and had been in bed for about 45 minutes before Potamus woke up. And that’s when I have to rely on Boof for the rest of the memory, because I don’t remember much except one encounter with my fist and a wall and yelling ‘Potamus! GO TO SLEEP!” I was asleep, myself, and with earplugs in I couldn’t hear much to begin with. Boof said I was initially very concerned about Potamus crying (Boof was changing him because he had peed through his diaper) and he wouldn’t stop. I guess I was concerned and sweet and then went to pee and punched the wall twice and slammed a few doors. And then there was yelling, but that was 30 minutes later. And then Boof told me to go back to bed, and I woke up at 2am because Potamus was crying, and I found him out on the couch, asleep in Boof’s arms (who was also asleep).

I don’t remember any of that. Except yelling that 1 time. I don’t remember hitting the wall with my hand or cussing Boof out or the fact that it wasn’t a 30 second ‘grumble grumble’ encounter. Becuase I was asleep.

What’s strange is that I had read several articles yesterday on sleep deprivation in moms (or parents) and the importance of communication. When Boof and I debriefed this morning he was shocked to hear my account of the events. He said that I am ‘an amazing mom 99% of the time, but when I see you like that, it’s time for me to step in, to save you from you,’ which I definitely agreed to. Because I don’t even know I’m doing it. Honestly. I was asleep.

Though I do know that my frustration level is not always that great, and I could work on better coping tools for when I am awake and withit and able to make mindful choices. But what do I do about these other times? I get scared that I might do something to hurt myself or my child in moments like that where I am not totally aware, because in my head I say ‘well, that’s never happened when Boof isn’t there,’ but I guess I can’t 100% be sure of that, you know?