"Is she sleeping through the night?"

New mamas and papas will always get this question again and again and again: "Is she sleeping through the night?" After reading several baby books, I have learned that sleeping through the night actually means sleeping 5 or more hours straight.

Yes, Soluna sleeps through some nights. Other nights, not so much.

And then comes the biggest sleep training debate: Should you let your baby cry it out? -- For the non-baby savvy, crying it out is leaving your baby in her crib or bassinet awake so that she can self-soothe to sleep. This usually means your baby will cry until she is so tired she will fall asleep and, hopefully, eventually learn how to fall asleep crying less often or not at all. There are versions of the crying out method where you go into the room to check on your baby at different intervals and soothe her for a certain amount of time and then leave again.

Alright, maybe I am a (overly) sensitive mama, but the thought of this breaks my heart. Could I ever leave Soluna crying?? ... NO!

So we have been happily rocking her/brestfeeding her/putting her in the sling to sleep now for ... her entire life. I say happily, but I know that there have been nights we have struggled, when an overly stimulated Soluna has cried and cried in our arms until falling asleep hours later or when she just tossed and turned in bed pulling my nipple with her as she fought off sleep.

I tried some methods from The No Cry Sleep Solution, another book that seems to be recommended by all kinds of mothers. This book is kind of a balance between "attachment parenting" and "crying it out." It offers a way to sleep train babies without mama or baby (or even daddy) tears. Soluna was sleeping at around 9 or 10PM and then waking up around 2-3 times at night and then starting her day at around 7 or 8AM. We thought she might need a little more sleep so we tried some suggestions in the book when Soluna was about 4 and a half months.

The book said that babies are usually ready to sleep at around 6:30-7PM. So we started a night time routine to wind Soluna down which consisted of washing her with a washcloth, changing her diaper, changing her into PJs, and reading her a book. Supposedly this will eventually help cue her for bedtime. I would still have to breastfeed her to sleep and/or my husband would put her into a sling and rock her to sleep. We tried this for over a week and it messed with Soluna's previous sleeping schedule. She was waking up more times at night and was ready to play by 6AM. Which was not fun for mama or papi!

So we asked ourselves one important question: Were things really that bad?

And the answer was... No. We co-sleep, so I didn't really mind waking up as long as I could just roll over, she could eat and we could fall asleep snuggling. I actually liked it. So then, why was it so important for us to get her to sleep earlier? So for now, we're putting sleep training on hold.


Mama Note: I want to say that I am not hating on other choices parents make on how to put their baby to sleep. Parenting is about survival and you do what you need to do to remain sane. These are the decisions we are making as we go.. things might be different in 2 more months, when she is 1 years old or even next week.

mama rage part II

Benji protests loudly when reading previous post: How was he supposed to know that the purple sling was in our dark bedroom?

Baby wakes up. Starts Crying.

sleepy mama rage

Alright, I have always gone crazy on folks who have woken me up while I'm asleep. That's just who I am. But when you're a mama, no matter how loco you want to get on someone, it's your job, your joy to get up to take care of baby. Now after 6 months of truncated sleep, even though things are relatively "hella better" then the first few weeks when it seemed like we were waking up every hour or less, I think this sleep schedule is playing with my emotions and my body.

After taking care of a somewhat fussy Soluna by myself for 12 hours, as soon as Benji got home I was ready to pass her off. I tried to breastfeed her to sleep and she wanted to play with daddy so he took her into the living room while I was ready for a much needed nap. And I woke up to her whining in the other room. It hadn't even been an hour. I was ready to bite Ben's head off. RAGE MamaAya, watch out!

He swore up and down that she had just started whining, that he had just changed her diaper and she started, but I woke up with the feeling that he had let her whine the entire time I was asleep and I had gotten no rest. I, in my sleeping state, always want to just grab her and put her to my boob so she can doze off. But this didn't work, especially since I spent the time multi-tasking: shooting Benji the "I'm fucking pissed off that I didn't get any sleep and you couldn't take care of the baby for 30 minutes"-look while Soluna drank at my breast, poor thing (Benji and Soluna). I eventually asked him to take her back and he drove her to Can't Fail to pick us up some dinner. When he got home, he put her in the sling (that he didn't want to find during her 30 minutes of whining) and she was asleep. I ended up getting at least an hour and a half of sleep. Now I feel as "refreshed" as ever, if that means anything anymore. Sigh.