And miles to go before she sleeps …
The Noodle has been waking up at 3am like clockwork for the past month. I don’t mean crying out in her sleep, or needing a diaper change, or a snack, I mean full on, clapping, chatting, ready to start the day, AWAKE. It takes us an hour to get her back to sleep which involves the following: picking her up, nursing on both sides, giving her a pacifier, putting her in her crib awake at which point she starts wailing, letting her cry for a few minutes, picking her up again, rocking her, dry nursing (yowch!), bringing her to bed with us, and after about 15 minutes of tossing, turning, slapping, and scratching she finally goes to sleep. Then we get about an hour of shuteye before Mr. Disgruntled has to get up for work. We’re sleeping on average about 3 hours of interrupted sleep (10pm-12am, 4-5am) — it’s fucking brutal you guys. And once school starts for me, I might just have a nervous breakdown.
So, in a fit of late-night desperation, after googling toddler sleep problems on my iPhone, I decided to buy two books: Elizabeth Pantley’s No Cry Sleep Solution and Richard Ferber’s Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems. Pantley’s method calls for a gentle weaning of bad habits. The Noodle needs to nurse and then suck her pacifier to sleep, Pantley says to wait until she’s sleepy, not fully asleep to remove my breast or pacifier. She says to repeat this removal over and over until she’s sleepy (but not asleep) and doesn’t root for a nipple. The problem with that method is that we were basically doing that already and it would end in tears anyway. Also her plan doesn’t have any advice for the weird 3am wakings. She’s ready to be up and play, and the only way for her to not cry is to accommodate her and get up, which is just crazy.
So, Pantley was a no go.
After talking with the Mr. about what we should do, we decided to go with the Ferber Method — what we considered the nuclear option.
Ferber’s method, like Pantley’s, advocates for teaching your child to go sleep on her own. Ferber argues that, like with anything a toddler wants but probably shouldn’t have, they’ll cry about it. So the Noodle wants her mama, not because she needs affirmation that I love her, but because she’s tired and only knows one way to go to sleep. The solution is to teach her to sleep on her own.
Now I’ve heard a lot of shit about Ferber. I’m sure I’m going to get some hate comments accusing me of torturing my baby. I read all the stories against Ferber in the Noodle’s early months and it sounded like torture to me so we never even considered it. But the late-night wakings were getting worse, not better, and we needed to figure out why.
Ferber’s book is the perfect tool for us. Most of it is about infant to adolescent sleep patterns and the numerous causes for sleep problems. This is why the book is called, Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems, not How to Force Your Baby to Sleep Through Torture and Have a Martini at the Same Time and most of it is spent discussing potential sleep problems. If you learn that your baby has sleep association problems; that is, needing to feed, suck, be rocked, listen to music, etc. to fall asleep, then you can use his “progressive-waiting” approach. But if your baby is old enough to experience fear of monsters or wets the bed, or knocks their head against their crib, has sleep apnea, or narcolepsy, he recommends other approaches.
So after reading the book, we diagnosed the Noodle with sleep association problems. She learned that the only way to fall asleep is suck at my breast followed by the pacifier. And that when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she wants the breast again to fall asleep. We also decided that our presence in the room was also distracting to her so we slept on the pull-out sofa last night. Here’s how our “progressive-waiting” plan went last night:
7:00: Dinner of pureed peas, apples, pears, bananas, and Earth’s Best Multigrain Cereal mixed with breast milk.
7:30: Bathtime.
7:45: Baby massage with lotion. Singing. Pajamas. Singing. Storytime.
8:10: Put her down in her crib with Skinflap (we seriously need a better name. Ideas?) and then she promptly started wailing, rolled over, and stood up.
8:13: First check. Still wailing. Mr. Disgruntled checks on her first. She’s standing in her crib, gripping the railing, and screaming and crying. Mr. Disgruntled is now convinced that we are terrible parents and this was the worst idea ever.
8:19: Second check. Still wailing. She’s standing in her crib again, just as before. I tell myself that if she’s thrown up, we’re done. No sign of throw-up, I set her down, rub her belly, hand her the bear, say, “goodnight baby girl” and leave. I’ve been pacing around the apartment and Mr. Disgruntled is so tired he thinks maybe this was a bad time to start. Too late! We agreed before we started and now we’re stuck with it. And as I type this, I realize we’re being “sleep-trained” too.
8:30: Third check. Still wailing. Mr. Disgruntled checks on her. It’s all the same, crib-gripping wailing and wanting to be picked up. When he emerges we try to eat dinner and have a stress argument. I’m pissed because I think he thinks I made a bad call on starting the Ferber thing, he’s smart enough to realize that we’re all under an INSANE amount of stress and we should stop arguing. A few minutes later, the monitor goes quiet.
8:58: The crying starts up again. It’s just as crazed as ever. The knot in stomach has moved to my chest and my temples. I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack. This is the single worst thing I’ve ever done, why am I not running in there to console her? What is wrong with me? Have I shutdown a crucial instinct and now I’ll be a damaged mama who can stomach her babies cries, leaving her to wail in a corner until she withers and dies? Mr. Disgruntled and remind each other that we’re teaching her, that this is just one night, that she won’t be permanently damaged.
9:08: Fourth check. She’s not standing this time, she’s sitting and wailing. And to make matters worse, she’s clapping because that’s all she knows how to do to express herself. Cry and clap. Oh god, this is fucking awful. Fuck you Ferber, all those internet moms were right, and now I should wear a scarlet letter F for failed mom. Poor Noodle, so many tears, so much screaming, so much reaching and saying, “mumumumumum” over and over. I lay her down, rub her belly, hand her the bear, and leave.
9:10: Silence. Mr. Disgruntled grabs a beer from the fridge, the only alcohol in the house. I take a sip, I don’t really taste it, I don’t really feel anything but a hyper-state of alertness. Waiting to for the crying to start, but also waiting to hear if something dangerous is happening.
10:00 or so. Mr. Disgruntled and I are convinced the Noodle is dead. Managing to strangle herself with pure rage. I sneak in to check on her, managing not to rouse her despite the parquet floor minefield. She’s curled up in child’s pose in the corner of her crib, sleeping soundly. Her soft exhales are music to my ears and I calm down a little bit. Maybe this Ferber thing is working? Or maybe we just gave her brain damage.
11:00. I’m still awake. It’s funny, the Noodle got way more strung out than we did and she wound herself down to sleep. Whereas I’m so wound up I feel tearing the doors of their hinges.
12:25am. Crying starts. I did manage to get about an hour of sleep, but her crying jolted me up so hard I practically lept out of bed.
12:28am: Round Two. First check. All is the same as before, standing, screaming, torture.
12:34am: Second check. She’s still crying, but she’s laying on her belly and her cries are breathier from sheer exhaustion. I rub her back, give her the bear, say “goodnight baby girl,” and leave.
12:45am: She quiets down. She whimpers then cries then quiets for the next 15 minutes.
1:00am: Sleeping baby. Is this getting better? We only had to check on her twice. Mr. Disgruntled seems in better spirits, but we’ll see.
3:00am: Crying starts up again. I slept for about an hour and a half. Not a lot, but enough that I felt a little less anxious than the previous wake-up. But because she’s crying and not just PING! AWAKE! LET’S START THE DAY! I actually think this is improvement. Then I think I’ve gone totally crazy because why would the sound of an angry baby crying be better than cheerful awake baby? Will I ever forgive myself for this?
5:45am: Crying, not hysterical, more like yelling. We decide to go in and get her, even though it’s 15 minutes before our goal. She’s cranky. I think, oh fucking great. She’s ruined forever. Why did we do this? We’re selfish, awful, mean, baby-hating, puppy-killing people. Oh baby girl, please forgive us!
6:00am: Breastfeed. She was cranky because she was genuinely hungry. After breakfast, she burps, she smiles, all, for her, is right in the world.
8:50am: She’s looking pretty tired and getting cranky. My original plan was to put her to sleep at her usual 9:30/10am naptime, but I decide it’s in her best interest to respond to her cues. I change her diaper, hold her a minute and gently whisper that we’re going to take a nap now and that she’s going to cry, but mama will be right here. I set her down, she starts to wail. I rub her belly, shush, and leave.
8:55am: First check. Just like last night, she’s wailing and standing. I set her down, rub her belly, shush, and leave. This time it doesn’t seem quite so bad. Maybe because I’m awake and we did some progress last night. I’m still not too sure about this, but it doesn’t seem impossible.
9:00am: Asleep. That was it! Just one check and she went down! Cried for about 10 minutes.
10:35am: Softly crying, nothing serious, time to wake up. I pick her up, she smiles. No sign of brain damage or anger or anything but a happy baby. We’re going to go for a walk now and play on the swings. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day in New York, and after a rough night, we need some fun.
To be continued …
Update: I’ve been reading Accidents’ post about night-weaning and sleep-training over and over during this whole ordeal. It’s like I have a kindly second opinion who validates and supports the torture project sleep training we’re doing here. If you found your way here because you’re thinking of jumping the Ferber cliff, start with her post. It’s gentle, funny, and best of all, it makes sense.
