We are not sleeping. And it is not fun.
This has come as a total surprise for us because things had been going so well. From the time she was 5 weeks old, Cecilia has pretty regularly been sleeping 5+ hours to start the night (though often 6-8+!), followed by a one or two solid 2-4 hour chunks. And after night feeds she'd just turn her head away when she was finished, sound asleep. In the early days we had to walk around the room jouncing her to sleep at bedtime, but somewhere around 8 weeks she totally surprised us and after swaddling her and nursing on our bed as always she pulled off, turned her head away and laid there quietly next to me sucking on her paci until she fell asleep. Jay and I were shocked. After a few minutes of stunned silence and quiet celebration, we put her into her bed and she slept peacefully for over 5 hours. Each night after that we kept thinking our luck would run out but miraculously, Ceci kept putting herself to sleep. And she kept putting herself right back to sleep after waking to eat. It was awesome.
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| Sleeping Bliss |
Just before she turned 3 months Ceci started breaking out of her swaddle in the early morning hours. It didn't seem to disturb her too much, though it made us a little nervous because sometimes some of the fabric would wind up bunched near her face. So we thought, maybe she doesn't need the swaddle anymore, let's try swaddling her with one arm out. And she slept the same as always. Feeling a bit (probably over) confident, the next night we dropped the swaddle altogether and went straight for a sleeping bag. Again, she fell asleep as easily as always and slept great. So we though, huh, I guess that's it, no more swaddle.
But within a few days, Ceci started waking up more regularly at night - more like every 2-3 hours throughout the night. She would eat each time, ravenously in fact, so I figured it was just the 3 month growth spurt. After a few days, though, she was still waking up frequently but I noticed she was eating less and less each time. So I figured she wasn't waking out of hunger and upon given her a paci instead she would usually go right back to sleep. Great. Except that as the days wore on, she started to wake up more and more. And sometimes just giving her a paci wasn't enough. It just kept getting worse and worse. So we reintroduced the swaddle in case that was the problem - her sleep improved for a couple days, then started to worsen again. At this point I feared that the 3 month growth spurt had been piggy-backed by an early 4 month sleep regression. Oh joy.
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| Sleep? No thanks! |
The struggle is different every night. One night she was up from 12-2am, at first in and out of sleep every 10 minutes or so, constantly needing me to give her back the paci she spit out or rub her tummy or let her lie next to me in our bed to settle back to sleep; then she was just awake...resolutely refusing to go back to sleep. I ended up waking up Jay because I was so exhausted I was afraid I'd accidentally fall asleep next to her and squash her. The night before she was up every 10-45 minutes from 3:30 until she got up for the day at 7:30. I was lucky if I got 20 minutes of sleep here and there. Other nights she's just up every hour to eat or for her paci or because she broke out of her swaddle. Or she wakes herself up farting (she sounds like an old man!) and then can't get herself comfortable again or she's too wired to get back to sleep. One 4 hour stretch is now celebrated as a victory. It's been nearly two weeks since she slept over 5 hours straight. And nearly a month since she's slept more than 6. Gosh I miss those days. A lot. I'm really hoping this is just the dreaded 4-month sleep regression and that it will work itself out soon, but it's been a month and we're still not much better. Ugh.
To make matters worse, she's also not falling asleep as easily. She'll usually eventually fall asleep laying next to me like she used to, but it involves a lot of off and on eating, crying and needing to be held to calm down, fighting the swaddle, then eating again, until she finally tuckers herself out so much that she passes out. We remain totally torn on the swaddle. She fights the swaddle with an angry passion, but without it she slams her arms around, hits herself in the face, pulls at everything in reach (including pulling her paci out of her mouth and then getting really upset that it's gone). We have no idea what to do. Bedtime has now turned into an often hour long battle rather than the peaceful 10-15 minutes we enjoyed before. It is exhausting.
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| We don't need no stinking naps! |
And as if that wasn't enough, the past couple days she's started to fight some of her naps. We're still napping in the sling in her room, but instead of peacefully going off to sleep like she has been, she's started fighting against the sling and crying. But moving away from the sling has not been working either. Try as we might, she will not sleep in her stroller, car seat, vibrating chair or swing. (The other day we were walking around town and Ceci was chilling in her stroller - that in and of itself is a success. She was super tired and actually looked like she might fall asleep. But after 1.5 hours of walking around she was still forcing her eyes to stay open. On the car ride home, still nothing. She is determined.) The crib is a no go too. At least once a day I try to put her down in her crib once she's asleep or get her to actually fall asleep in her crib, but it's not going well. Most of the time as soon as she's in the crib she's wide awake. And if we just leave her there she'll look around quietly for a while, play with her hands and feet if she's not swaddled, until she eventually gets bored and cries (anywhere from 5 - 20 minutes later). We've tried putting her down just before she falls asleep in our arms, 5-10 minutes after, 30 minutes after, 40 minutes, etc etc...nothing seems to work. And any success we do have is very short-lived (our record is 37 minutes, but usually it's closer to 5) so the nap is shorter than it should be and Ceci turns into a crankmonster soon after waking. Last night she even refused her third nap all together (we gave up after an hour of trying everything we could think of) so she was awake (and incredibly fussy) for nearly 5 hours before she finally passed out for the night at 8:30 (bedtime was another 1.5 hour battle).
We've considered using some version of cry it out, but I'm just not sure I'm OK with it - especially not this young. A lot of what I've read about it says it's best not to do it before 6 months. Plus, knowing Ceci's personality, she will cry and scream loudly for a very long time before giving in (if she does at all!).
All of this, combined with the emotional roller coaster that accompanies sleep deprivation, has me suffering a serious crisis of confidence. There are times when I feel like a terrible mom - that I've somehow screwed up my kid and she well never ever sleep in her bed or fall asleep without me and it's all my fault. But then I remember that this is just how she came into the world - even as a newborn she didn't peacefully drift off to sleep wherever she was when she was tired. We have always, always, had to make a conscious effort to get her to sleep. There are times when it just seems impossible - that there is no way I can make it through another night of strung together cat naps or survive another day feeling more tired than I ever knew possible. But somehow I do (in no small part due to Jay's unending support and help...we've started taking care of Ceci in shifts at night which is helping a bit), clinging to the belief that this has to end at some point. (I mean..it has to, right?).
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| Hmm...maybe this time I'll wake up after 10 minutes...that would be fun! |
In one of my desperate sleep deprived google searches on the 4 month sleep regression, I came across this great quote.
"There is nothing inherently wrong with your child—this is normal. Hideous and demoralizing, but normal. You’re doing a good job."I keep trying to tell myself this. Some days it's easier to hear than others. But on even the hardest days, she looks at me like this
Courtesy of MomsAlive
UPDATE:
Ceci did eventually start sleeping much better around 5 months and quite often through the night around 8 months!
And she started taking naps in her crib at 11 months!
So there was a light at the end of the tunnel...it was just a long tunnel.
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