When I was pregnant my brother asked me which one thing I thought I would find difficult to deal with once the baby arrived. Without hesitation, my answer was sleep! Let me make this abundantly clear - I love my bed and I love to sleep. If I didn't get at least 8 hours of deep, uninterrupted, beautiful sleep each night I would think that the night was wasted. My husband used to find it highly amusing that I had to be the first in bed - if I suspected in the slightest that he was about to go to bed, I would race upstairs to the bathroom so that I could pull on my PJs and be the first to jump into bed ready to greet the land of Nod. Even when I was a little girl my favourite book was "Peace at Last" by Jill Murphy which is about Mr Bear's attempt to try and get a good night's rest.
I knew that having a newborn would mean sleepless nights but I'd imposed a mental block on what the reality would be - after all, it would only be for 3 months after all and then I would be back to my 8+ hours of sleeping bliss! Everyone knows that something magical happens at 3 months when your baby starts sleeping through the night, you have a routine, the house is spotlessly clean, you find time to shave your legs and put on make up every day.. hmmmm.
When we reached that magical 3 month milestone, Josh was still waking up for feeds every 1.5 to 2 hours and I was a walking zombie. On the mornings which followed the bad nights, I would be in tears on the sofa not knowing what to do with myself or Josh for that matter. I felt guilty for not wanting to play with Josh on those days and to appease my guilt I would go to my sisters just so that someone would play properly with him. I felt ready to punch other people who asked me whether or not he was sleeping through yet, because of course their baby was sleeping through by 6 weeks (in the same way that I used to feel like punching anyone who asked me when my due date was as I looked "ready to drop" when I still had 4 weeks left to go... grrr).
I kept telling myself he was waking so much because he was a big hungry boy (he was 9lb 7oz when he was born) and I kept thinking back to one of the auxiliary nurses in the hospital who informed me just 9 hours after Josh had been born that I would have to do combined feeding because he was a big boy and that's what she had to do with both her sons. Deep down I didn't want to start giving Josh formula as the breastfeeding had been going so well in all other aspects.
I started blaming other things instead, starting with his 8 week growth spurt as that's when the sleep regression started. He'd been going 3 to 4 hours between feeds until we hit the 8 week mark. My husband was in the States and I remember being sat in bed in tears at 3 am starting at Josh who was lying in my lap and crying. I'd been feeding him every hour through the night and was at my wits end. I didn't realise at the time that growth spurts could be so horrendous and in retrospect I wish we'd discussed them in our NCT classes so that I knew what to expect. How could a growth spurt possibly last for 6 weeks though?! It couldn't possibly be that.
Next I decided it was down to teething. Nicely for us, that had also started at 8 weeks and coincided with the growth spurt nights from hell. That was fun. I researched everywhere and the consensus was generally that teething wasn't really to blame for night wakings. Damn.
I came back to hunger and decided maybe formula wasn't the answer for us - it must be weaning. I armed myself with some baby rice and some weaning spoons, determined that this was better than formula but Josh was only 14 weeks by this stage. Again in true Alice style I decided to collect opinions from as many people as possible to add to my confusion and I truly did end up in a muddle. "Once you start you can't stop", "babies only need milk for the first 6 months", "just because your baby is waking up early doesn't mean it needs solid food", "we were all weaned at 3 months and there's nothing wrong with us" - so many different views led to a very confused Alice so I held off. Weaning is such a major step and I didn't want to start it as a knee jerk reaction to a sleep problem. I would wait until Josh was good and ready.
I got frustrated with my mum telling me that I just had to "go with the flow" and "muddle through" and I
rebelled in my own quiet way by buying dozens of books on sleep. I was convinced that the answer to Josh's frequent night wakings was there in black and white. If I couldn't get any sleep, it felt comforting to at least read about it and feel like I was doing something to take control!! I needed some kind of light at the end of the tunnel and I just couldn't see any, especially as I had expected the worst of the sleepless nights to be behind us by 3 months but that was the crux of my problem - expectation!
Once I'd managed to let go of my expectations and my need to control things (easier said than done, especially if you come from a busy professional background), everything became a lot easier. I accepted that there would be bad nights and I would just have to "muddle through" the following day and I accepted that I should not be trying to find an end to them and just took each day as it came. Even now Josh still wakes 3 times a night for a feed but that's ok. I've forgotten what it feels like to go to bed at 10 pm and wake up the following morning at 8.30 am and that's a good thing. One day it will happen again and when it does I shall be a very happy bunny but don't all good things come to those who wait?
No comments:
Post a Comment