Co-Sleeping

I LOVE co-sleeping. Especially for the first 6 months, co-sleeping was the very best sleeping configuration I could have imagined for my little family. When Little Chub was first born, she couldn't nurse well enough to nurse in the side lying until she was about 5 weeks old. Until then, I had to nurse her in the football hold to even get a latch, so, needless to say, every time she woke up, it was a struggle to get her fed, and I felt like a zombie for weeks (as I'm sure all new mothers do anyway). Once she could nurse lying down, I felt like a new woman! Even though she woke up a few times a night, I was still getting plenty of rest because I never had to waken entirely. She was even regularly going 6 hour stretches without waking up for over a month, until she was about four months old and we moved here to Stanford for grad school. I didn't really notice it as a sudden change, but before we moved, she was sleeping for 6 hours, would wake up once to nurse, then would sleep again for another 4 hours! Then shortly after we moved, she was waking up 3-4 times per night. That 3-4 times per night gradually increased until it reached an apex of more than 20 times a night once! That was ridiculous! But what could I do?

After that, I learned to try to keep the room temperature a bit more steady, and to try to dress her in the appropriate pajamas for the temperature, and I also realized that I needed to work with the fact that she HATES having blankets on. (She also hates having socks, shoes, tights, and long sleeves on.) So, from that point she started waking up less (than 20 times), but until a couple of weeks ago, on a totally normal night she would wake up about 8 times. Sometimes it would be more, sometimes less. One night, Peter hurt his rib, and he couldn't lie flat in bed and had to spend the night in the recliner. Little Chub and I got our queen bed all to ourselves, and she only woke up twice that night! I was so rested after that--it felt great! We decided that after our vacation for Christmas we were going to do something about her sleeping situation because it was no longer working.

When we got back, we slept in the normal configuration for a few nights, and three nights in a row, even though she was tired, she played on the bed and used her parents as a jungle gym. We tried to sleep even though she was awake, but eventually she decided she was tired and cried a lot until I nursed her to sleep. At this point, we were VERY tempted to try the cry it out method, and I have to say, if the crib had been set up properly, I would have stuck her in it and let her cry. But then I would have most likely given up and nursed her and the whole thing would have been pointless. So, I did some reading on the internet, and some other parents who had been in my situation with similar aged babies had successfully night-weaned their babies, which helped them sleep better at night. That sounded like a good idea to me, so one night I pulled out the guest bed and Little Chub and I slept there for the night so I could comfort her when she cried and try to get her back to sleep without nursing, AND she would have plenty of space like she seems to need.

At first, this seemed to be working okay. I got her to fall asleep without nursing, which was actually a really big accomplishment, and also got her back to sleep the first time she woke up. The second time she woke up was a nightmare! She cried for over an hour!! I rocked her, sang to her, patted her, talked to her soothingly, and she only fell asleep once I got out of bed and rocked her on my shoulder, and only because she was so tired of crying. She woke up about 5 minutes after I put her back in bed. At this point, I couldn't bear to see her cry like that all over again, and I am CONVINCED that she would have. So, I nursed her back to sleep before she even got to the noisemaking stage of waking up, and she slept through until the morning (probably another three hours). All in all, she only woke up three times, but the nightweaning thing was a big failure in my book. From that point, I decided that she and I would sleep in a different bed from Peter, and maybe this would train her to sleep better and longer, and eventually (hopefully sooner rather than later) I can leave her in her own bed, and come back when she needs me, and this will hopefully lead to her sleeping through the night on her own.

So, that's our current "solution". That other bed might turn into the crib, with me going to her in the night like other moms do for newborn babies. But honestly, I have NO IDEA what I'm really doing, and it's not for a shortage of reading my options.

So, what's going to work? Will I be able to stick to my plan? Will I be co-sleeping with 5 babies in a decade? Who knows, but I sure hope we find a good solution soon! Peter is starting to get lonely at night!