All posts by Bella

Reader’s question: Siblings and cribs and big boy beds, oh my!

5.5 - 8 months, Readers' Questions, siblings

So here's a GREAT question. Great in that, "wow, it covers so many issues" way and, also, great in that "holy crap where do we start?" way… I'm doing this in parts because, well, there's lots of parts:

I figured why not ask you a question about M''s sleep because OMG I'm dying here. She's 7 months and unlike her bro (now 2.5), she's not yet napping
on a flat surface.

OK, right off the bat, I just have to suggest that whatever you're thinking, the 2.5 year old will have some problems with whatever transition you're going to make, given he's in a MAJOR developmental transition. Doesn't mean you shouldn't make changes, only means that you should be aware of the crazies that might ensue. I realize I haven't written yet about the 2.5 stage on this blog. Bad me. VERY soon I'll get into the details. Like… tomorrow. As for the 7-month old… If you're going to do anything dramatic, DO IT NOW!  8 months is just around the corner and that's a tough age for change.

With D, he had a nice smooth transition to me
laying with him on the bed to nurse, falling asleep and me leaving him
there for naps. I could even move him to his crib/co-sleeper and he was
fine as he got older. He'd cry at first and then be fine. Same happened
when I night weaned him. Easy CIO and was done. Q was a
completely different story. Actually, she's a lot like how M is
now.

Little Miss M naps in her car seat in the Graco Sweet Peace
(swing) and I can nurse her, put her in there awake, and she'll scream
a bit and then fall asleep. But it's playing music and swinging. If I
do the lay down/nurse thing with her, she pops right awake when I get
up and it's all over. Of course, I have not actually tried putting her
in a crib (D is still in there) and the playpen was a disaster
because she'd stay asleep and then roll over a few minutes in and wake
up screaming her fool head off. Admittedly, I've been lax on the naps
because I'm chasing after the other two. But, for the most part, those
are okay (although I want to get her on a solid flat surface and not
always in the swing…

You're in a great time of resilience for your 7-month old, so any major
change you want to make will probably go reasonably smoothly. You seem to be ok with some pretty proactive
sleep-training methods: you can put those in place for naptime anytime
(like, now) you're ready.

 
Needless to say, at night, she's still in with me and I'm not
getting any sleep. She does fall asleep and most often stays asleep
(except for the last week = teething/separation) in our bed. But when I
get in, she wants to nurse constantly, and I give in, mostly to keep
her quiet so I can catch some z's. I know that if she was in her own
bed in her own room, she probably wouldn't need to nurse, but since
she's with me, I hear her and then pop a boob in her mouth.
 
We're ready to move D [2.5 years old remember...] into a big bed with Q [his almost-5 year old sis] (same room -
God help me) and then move M into his crib. I THINK. D still
naps so well in the crib, I'm afraid to make him sleep in a big boy bed
for nap time when I fear he'll just get out and never nap. And M,
well, I realize some training will need to occur because good lord, the
night time especially is really killing me. I'm not averse to CIO; it
never worked with Q but was great with D. She does seem to scream
and then fall asleep if she's tired. So that's a good thing.
 
We were waiting to do this all in one big shift (which probably
isn't that smart), but it needs to happen. I need my bed and boobs
back. I'm not interested in night weaning, and I'll go in there 1 or 2x
if I have to, but I need her out of my bed.
 
So should I move D? Get another crib for M? Move him just
for night and leave him in the crib for naps (and put M in a
playpen?) Move them both at the same time?

OK, everyone following that? Yeah, YOU try having 3 kids under 5… Here's my distilled advice, after making far too many flow-charts to get this all straight. M is at a great age to make the transition from co-sleeping to her own crib. Wait another month and it will be SO MUCH HARDER. And you're really fed up, which means a lot in my book. You can't be the flexible, connected mother you want to be when you're sleep-deprived and starting to feel fed up. So, I'd say: Go for it! Move M to a crib or crib-like thingy.

But here's the problem, D is 2.5 and that means real upheaval, developmentally. The short story is that he's going through a major cognitive-emotional transition period. I'll write more about it in a post unto itself tomorrow, but one of the main components of this stage is the onset of JEALOUSY. So, before this, he didn't have the capacity to feel the real force of jealousy (yeah, he might have been whiny when he wanted you and you had his baby sister in your arms or at your breast, but NOTHING like what he's feeling now or will be feeing very soon). Because of this sudden developmental onset of jealousy, moving him OUT of his bed/crib and substituting his sister in his place will be, in short, a MAJOR diss from his perspective. Now, you could just decide that it's worth the upheaval. You wouldn't be evil deciding that, given the various constraints of available beds, cribs, boobs, and sleep deprivation. But if it was me, here's what I'd do:

I'd move M to a crib or some sort of pack and play or something, out of your bed (too bad you don't live close to me… I have two cribs I need to get rid of soon). It's  a great age for this shift for her. I'd leave D in his crib for another 4 months or so. He's sleeping in there great, he's napping wonderfully, and everything is how you'd like it to be, except that he's got the crib you'd like to give to M. MANY kids drop their naps if they're shifted to a big boy bed during this 2.5 year old stage. First off, this stage often involves sleep setbacks to begin with. If you compound these developmentally-charged sleep setbacks with a change in sleep setting all together, you may be in for some real sleep upheavals from him. The rest you thought you'd get from M being out of your bed may end up being compensated for by the crazies that might come from D. Also, switching him back and forth from his new "big boy bed" to his old crib (just for naps but not for night), where his baby sister will be sleeping at night, will be very confusing for him and might make him less likely to sleep in both settings. Many kids really get comfort from the feeling of their own space, their own bed, their little den. To try to get him to switch back and forth, in a time of transition (nap and night), will probably be very difficult.

This is really, really hard because you're balancing the developmental needs of two children, one of whom is in a great resilient stage and the other who is in a vulnerable, sensitive stage. The oldest will probably do just fine with having her brother start sleeping in her room (5 is a nice stable age). Add to the mix that your own needs have to be met and you have space constraints and it seems silly to purchase an extra crib… well, it is really tough and very typical for many families dealing with siblings and their conflicting sleep needs.

But, of course, you guys should know me well enough by now to know that
I never think things are so absolute. So… if you're desperate, and
you really don't want to buy a second crib or move M to his brother's
room for a few months, you COULD try to play the "big boy" card big
time. If you go the route of change everything all at once (OY!), here's how I'd do it: You could keep in mind D's probable issues with jealousy and let
him know how SPECIAL and BIG and GREAT he's been, so much so that
you're going to move him to his very own SPECIAL, BIG BOY bed, in his
BIG SISTER'S SPECIAL room. Really make a HUGE deal of how much you love, care, respect, need him. In other words, make this transition the foundation for addressing his probable jealousy. Take some extra time to be sensitive to what this move means to him and make it clear to him how special his role in the family is. Also, pay extra attention to his emotions and perhaps connect with him on how hard it might be for him. I don't mean to sound extra hokey, but it really is a sensitive stage in his little world.

Any other moms with more than one child who are dealing with a similar situation? How do you decide whose needs to prioritize? What would you do in this situation?

A reader’s question triggered this rant and I’m grateful for it

3-4 months, Readers' Questions

There are so many mixed feelings about sleep training (guilt, strident confidence, defensiveness, desperation, resignation, and so on) and I think, in part, it's a reflection of more general parenting philosophies. There are some of us that started out thinking that we'd be exceptionally responsive to our baby's needs and we'd give up taking care of ourselves for the privilege of taking care of an innocent baby. There are others of us who vowed to keep our own personal and professional lives while making reasonable compromises for our new baby. And still some of us went into this parenting thing with no clue that we'd have any "parenting philosophy" whatsoever until we saw that horrid woman with her sweet child and she… <you fill in the blank>. Somehow, many of us become so wildly committed to the paths that we chose explicitly or stumbled upon. Despite the wildly controversial issues that parents (mostly mothers) feel compelled to fight for (breast or bottle, daycare or SAH, CIO or co-sleep), the truth is that not much of it makes a reliable difference in the futures of our children. Short of flat-out abuse, neglect and SERIOUS conflict in the family context, most parenting is "good enough." And I for one am so grateful for that empirical fact.

I recently received the following question from a reader:

"We are new parents to a 3.5 month old baby girl. She is a delight,
but sleep (hers and ours) has been the biggest concern and biggest
challenge. As we consider what might be best for our daughter, we are
very curious to know if there are benefits to sleep training, or if
sleep training is merely not detrimental.
 
Our daughter goes down easily for her morning nap, semi-easily for
the mid-day nap, and sometimes will not go down for her p.m. nap
despite being tired, and sometimes exhausted. Once we let her cry on
and off for 45 minutes. It wasn't fun for us or her, but we
experimented to see if it might help her understand the concept of
sleep.
 
Night sleep usually begins between 6:30 and 7 a la Weissbluth,
with a wake up between 1 and 2, and another between 4 and 5. She sleeps
in a co-sleeper and we're hoping to transition her to the crib at age 6
months."

My short response is: you're doing everything right, your baby is following very normal sleep patterns, and I hope that the 4-month sleep transition doesn't make things harder. This really is a description of the average sleep pattern many 3.5 month olds experience. In response to the main question about whether there are benefits to sleep training (and not merely the lack of detrimental effects), no, there is no well-designed study that can answer your question. But researchers and consumers of research can use the data as they like. So… yes, good sleep has been consistently associated with better performance on complex problem-solving tasks, better memory, improved mood (decreased risk of depression) and better physical reflexes. But many babies suck at sleeping and this "suckiness" has NOT been proven to be associated with long-term negative outcomes. More to the point of the reader's question, being a "well trained" sleeper as a baby has not been shown to lead to any BETTER outcomes. That's because it is almost impossible to design the right study to answer this question rigorously. I'll save you the research methodology course that I suffered through, but suffice it to say that to really establish that there are actual long-term, IMPORTANT benefits to having been sleep-trained, you'd have to randomly assign parents to either sleep train their child or not, no matter their actual parenting philosophy, their own upbringing, their child's temperament, the amount of support they had in their lives, the necessity for parents to go back to work early in the child's life, and so on. In short, there's no ethical way to run such a study. So… what we're stuck with is a bunch of studies that look at some families that DO sleep train and some that DON'T. And guess what? These families don't only differ on whether they sleep trained or not. They differ on all the other variables that I just mentioned: parenting philosophy, family history, support, family structure, child temperament, and so on. And those factors have a complex, interactive effect on child outcomes. Some children's temperaments are easier than others and this makes some children easier to sleep train for some parents. For other parents, they don't feel the need to sleep train these children with easier temperaments. Both families and children fair well. You can see the problem when you then add all the other variables that I mentioned. In short, there's no ethical way to do this kind of science to answer the question absolutely.

So… what we do know is being a sensitive, responsive parent while at the same time setting reasonable limits matters for the long-term developmental outcomes of our children. So does being personally happy, emotionally resilient, financially secure, and happily married (or in a secure, non-conflictual relationship). And if we're none of those things, if we're financially stressed, a single mom, bouncing back and forth between depression and "ok-ness", we are STILL likely to bring up our children to be thoughtful, loving, resilient, motivated, successful adults. All the research I have read (way too much to link to here, but see the books I reference in the sidebar), reviewed, and conducted myself has led me and many others to the same general conclusion: We need to screw up BIG TIME to really put our children at serious risk for long-term negative outcomes. Oh, and BTW, we can also do everything "right" and still have children who take drugs, have unsafe sex, get arrested or end up sad and lonely at the end of their life.

Sleep training matters in the day-to-day way that parenting always matters. But we're all trying to do our best, working with what instincts we have and compensating for what we don't with as much reading and surfing the web as we can fit in. Most of us will muddle through because we care enough to do our best (yes, it sounds like a commercial and I am SO cheesy sometimes). And chances are, our kids will be just fine, no matter if we Ferberize, co-sleep, CIO, use "no-cry" strategies, or say to hell with all of this sleep training.

I’m not a child sleep expert, I just play one on t.v.

Naps

I've been getting a few emails about naps and the complete randomness that seems to characterize the first 6 months of nap times. A few of these emails have been a little funny, the gist of which can be summarized as: "You're so lucky you're a child psychologist. It must have been so much easier dealing with your babies and the sleep issues that come up." SO not true. At least not in the first 6 months. See… I like predictability. I like knowing what will happen, or not happen, and when. That's what I love about developmental psychology: There are principles that govern how children change from one stage to the next and the vast majority of kids DO change in predictable ways from one age to the next. I knew that sleeping through the night was not going to be in my future for a while with my twin boys. But I kept hearing these words of wisdom: "You can always nap when THEY nap. Make sure to ALWAYS sleep when they sleep."  Hahahahahahahahaha!  Yeah, not so much. In the first 6 months, neither of my boys slept for more than 30 – 45 min at a time. I'd nurse one to sleepiness, swaddle, rock, bounce, sing, shush, put him down. Lather, rinse, repeat with the second boy. By then the first was up again. CERTAIN sleep gurus <cough> Weissbluth <cough> seemed to insist that I was damaging my kids' brains by "letting" them wake up after such short naps. My kids didn't read the right books. (In all honesty, I think there are some valuable insights in that book, but I do have some problems with it as well.) Suffice it to say that I was relieved when I learned that many babies don't consolidate their regular, extended nap schedules until around the age of 6 months.

Sleepy mama For the sake of keeping it real, I thought I'd share this picture because it pretty much says it all. I was such an avid Karp follower (I still think he's great). I checked off my 5 Ss and hoped to high heaven for my babies to be the sleepiest babies on the block…

 

4 months old Part II: The love affair takes off

4-5.5 months

I promised you more about what's going on in the 4-month old baby's emotional world. With this post, I'm going to try to give you a flavour for how big a difference one month makes at this early stage in development. Many developmentalists see the 3–4 month period as the fruition of a “love affair” between the infant and the caregiver. But it is a love affair with all the qualities of a still life. It doesn’t progress from moment to moment, and that’s because babies that age can't keep track of what to expect, what happens next. The cognitive software simply isn’t there yet—not until babies reach 4 months. That’s why, before about 4 months, regardless of how intensely your baby gazes at you, no matter how giddily she cooes and giggles at the glorious sight of your smile, there is no disappointment when the interaction ends—as long as it is followed right away by something else the baby can attend to. Even when left alone on a play mat, when you've gone off to pee, to answer the phone, to get a drink, 2 – 4-month old infants will generally not fuss if they are distracted by something interesting, at least not for a few minutes. That's why distraction is such an effective means of dealing with a 3-month old's crying. Oh no! Mama's gone! Waaaaaaaa! Hey… look at that fuzzy coloured ball… rattle, rattle, bounce, rattle… mama who?

Mom-and-baby-conversation2 It is at around 4 months that mother-infant reciprocity — that intense emotional dance of gazes and coos — peeks and it's a key transition point described by Margaret Mahler, an infant observer with a background in psychoanalysis. Mahler says that at 4 months begins a phase of “differentiation” of the infant from the mother marked by a mushrooming sense of autonomy. It may seem counter-intuitive that a period of increasing closeness should lead to a spurt in autonomy. But it's no accident. The love, excitement, and learning that flow between infant and caregiver during their face-to-face exchanges at around 3-4 months push the infant into a major developmental advance, a sort of blossoming of awareness that results in a sense of a self—an I—who can act on the world out there. Yet autonomy does not mean that the bond with the parent is over. Quite the contrary. Mahler emphasizes that the baby’s sense of a unique, separate self forms the basis of a new kind of bond with the mother—a bond between two partners, rather than a fusion in which mother and baby act as parts of a single organism. Infants now begin to interact with their caregivers in a back-and-forth fashion (as I described in detail in Part I). Also at this age, infants begin to initiate play and wait for the parent to respond to them. So the onset of differentiation at 4 months is a time of both budding autonomy and increased interpersonal engagement, leading to true play for the first time ever. The time babies spend gazing at mother’s face now begins to decline, but their attraction to game-playing skyrockets. Almost any kind of game will do, as long as it involves some repetitive, expectable activity. By 5 months, infants love the feeling of excited anticipation they get while waiting for the parent to swoop down, pat or tickle them, or throw them up in the air. When they feel lonely, or bored, or tired, they are now obsessed with their new-found power to initiate their parents' engagement and they now EXPECT parents to be on call for the next game to begin.

So the plot thickens for the 4-month old. And it's not hard to see why this developmental transition is such a difficult one for so many of us parents who are trying to take a break from the fun and games for one or two blessed hours, at least between 2 and 4 am…

Reader’s question about waiting out the 18-21 month transition

18-22 months, Readers' Questions

Many of you have written about being in the middle of one of the major stage transitions in development and not knowing what to do if sleep-training isn't a good option during these sensitive ages. Here's a typical question, from K:

I have a 20 month old daughter who has most definitely been in
the 18-21 month transition you describe: her language acquisition has
been breathtakingly fast, she has been suffering from extreme
separation anxiety, and she has gone from a once a night wake-up to
three or four times a night.  She has been getting her eyeteeth for
what seems like forever, and she's been a *terrible* teether–she
really suffers–so I have been saying that I would not try to night
wean her till she's done with the eyeteeth. She is still nursing, and
we co-sleep, albeit she sleeps the beginning of most nights in a kid's
bed pushed up against our mattress.

I am writing tonight because, for the last several weeks, our usual
nurse-to-sleep routine has been intermittently inneffective. On those
nights when I had to put her down "sleepy but awake" she initially
would squirm around for a bit, and then, after 30 or 40 minutes, fall
asleep. Only the last week or so, and the last two nights in
particular, she has not fallen asleep at all, rather she has gotten
more and more active in the bed, finally chanting "Mama? Mama? Mama?
Mama?" till I am ready to scream… My tack has been to get up and
move towards the door, which gets her to stop chanting my name, but
starts her crying. Oy.  I know this is not a good thing, to get up and
make her cry, but I am sooooo tired, burnt-out, and done with it, and
I just don't know what else to do.  Clearly, my sitting with her is
not helping her fall asleep.  Tonight, after I gave up after an hour
of sitting with her, her father went in to her, and she just screamed
and screamed for 30 minutes, till he brought her downstairs to me
because he was afraid she would hurt herself screaming.  So I calmed
her down, went upstairs, and nursed her to sleep, finally, at 10pm.
(We started what I call the "wind down" at 8pm)

I am of the opinion that what's going on is separation anxiety of a
sort–she knows I will leave the room at some point, and gets more and
more anxious when I don't leave the room, and more and more awake. I
am really not sure what to do about it, though.  Night-weaning has
suddenly become a hazy goal for another time: right now I just want
her to get the sleep she needs by going to sleep before 10pm.  This is
not good for any of us… But she's in that transition period where
sleep training seems to be not such a good idea, right? Would it make
sense to just allay her fears by staying with her till she falls
asleep no matter how long it takes and how hyper she gets? Would
nursing her downstairs and having my husband take her up just transfer
the problem to a different person? (She would not do this without much
protest, I am sure.) Or is it time to take on a sleep training
routine, grit our teeth and make a go of it?

Oy indeed! Most of what I've got for you is huge amounts of sympathy; this really is so hard. I think you have a very good grasp of what's going on in your little girl's head and anxiety is exactly the root of the problem. Unlike before the age of 18 months or so, she's now able to hold in mind her own goals and intentions (I must keep Mama HERE!) while simultaneously being aware of your conflicting goals (Mama wants to leave/get a life away from this bed). This is a phenomenal achievement! But the fact that she now has this advanced social understanding also means that she is in a constant state of negotiation with you for MORE! NO GO! MOMMY STAY!

The toddler at this age is somewhat of an addict. She wants nothing more than to continue to have access to your attention, your approval, and your presence. ALL. THE. TIME. That’s why 18-21 month old kids repeatedly call after mother, even though she is RIGHT THERE. (I remember distinctly when my boys were this age and they'd both be in my arms, climbing "uppy, UPPY" ever higher until there was no where else to go, no closer they could come to me, no more smashed up against me than they already were… and still they'd wail MAMA!). So, as I've mentioned before, your child at this age, though feisty and independent, is also insecure and often anxious, especially during times of impending separation (as you described perfectly in your question).

Given the powerful emotional vulnerabilities of this stage, now is not the time to entirely reconstruct bedtime habits, centered as they are on closeness, shared routines, mutual affection, and assurances of continued emotional connection. Ideally, now is a time to comfort and reassure, not to challenge or withdraw. But what on earth do you do when your regular acts of comfort, valiant and consistent as they have been, are not enough anymore?

I think the key goal here is to try to minimize your little girl's anxiety levels. That requires a context or routine that is completely predictable. I suspect that if she knows exactly what to expect from you and your husband and she knows that she can't do anything to change that, then her anxiety about figuring out how to keep you there will be start decreasing over time. This isn't about "breaking her spirit" or anything nutty like that. It's about letting her know that she doesn't have to WORRY about finding the right thing to say, do, yell, cry, whatever so that mommy stays with her. You will provide her with nourishment, love, physical comfort, and then you will let her fall asleep. So… what can you do to create an environment that decreases her anxiety? Unfortunately, I can't think of any magic bullet here. There's probably 3 general approaches:

1. The first is the "grin and bear it" approach. Given that she'll be out of this stage in a month or so, you can try to resign yourself to a longer bedtime routine. Lie next to her, nurse her, repeatedly tell her it's time to sleep and provide lots of warmth but as little stimulation as possible. This might really suck if she's still tap dancing on your head to the tune of "Mama, mama, mama", but if you show her that you'll consistently stay until she's asleep, then her protests may become less intense and shorter lived. At this point, her refusal to sleep might be in large part about not knowing whether this will be one of the nights you'll stay or finally get fed up and go.  

2. You can try to go with the old routine which will surely now require some distress on her part. In other words, you can lie with her, nurse her, and then after 30 min or so, leave, saying that it's time for bed, not playing. This will feel like you're actually sleep training her. And in a way you are, but back to the OLD routine. If you come back and check on her regularly, but stand firm on staying out of the bed with her, then she will eventually realize that her protests don't work to get you back. Although in some ways that sounds heartbreaking, the other way to look at is that you are actually RELIEVING her of her source of anxiety. If you know for sure you can't get what you want, you stop being preoccupied with that goal. Without that preoccupation, she may actually enjoy her time WITH you more and feel less anxious after, when you do leave.

3. If the crying gets unbearable for you and the hours of lying with her becomes equally crazy-making, then you can just bite the bullet and try your preferred sleep-training method that will teach her new sleep habits altogether (this can be where your husband really steps up to the plate). This isn't what I usually recommend during this stage, but if the alternatives become too unbearable, it is doable, it's just really, really hard.

To sum up: I think what you want to avoid are those acts that heighten her uncertainty. Walking away because you (understandably) have had enough may be the first step to triggering her distress, but what keeps it going is her knowledge that you MIGHT come back. So, predictability is key — in whatever form you feel you can provide. Walk out and stay out (within reason of course) or hop in bed for the night with her until this freaking awful stage passes. Because it WILL pass.

Anyone else in a similar situation, stuck in a sensitive stage with no way out but through? Does knowing it IS just a phase and it WILL pass help at all?

To get Bed Timing outside of North America

Uncategorized

For everyone who has written about how to get Bed Timing in Europe or the surrounds:

Alright, I think we've come up with the best solution possible, with the generous help of a reader. I'm going to send a stack of books to someone in Germany who will act as our "distribution hub." This will address the main two problems with getting the book off Amazon.ca: the shipping cost (which will be considerably lower because I'm sending a bunch of books in one bulk package and then each of the books will be sent within Europe) and the shipping time.

What I need from those of you who have already written to me and from anyone else that's interested is for you to EMAIL me <bedtiming@gmail.com> your name and address. If you email instead of responding through a comment here, your details will be kept confidential. I'll let you know as soon as I know, how long the book will take to get to you. In terms of price, I would imagine that the book plus shipping wouldn't cost more than about $20 or about 14 Euros. I won't know for sure until I've shipped the total number of books and get a sense of what it will cost me. The (very kind) volunteer from Germany has a paypal account, or e-cheques can also be used, so paying will be quite simple.

So, if you're interested, email me ASAP so I can get these books out to all those interested quickly.

For those of you who have written about getting the book in the U.S.: There are no immediate plans to distribute the book in the U.S. The book can be purchased on Amazon.ca and shipped to the States with much less hassle than Europe. So if you'd like the book, just click on the link to the left.

Thanks for your patience!

Back to 8-11 months for a reader’s question

8-11 months, Readers' Questions

Although I started to write about the 4-month stage transition yesterday, I want to return to the 8-11 month old stage we've already touched on for a reader's question. I've got a few thoughts about the issues she raises and then I'm hoping that the rest of you can chime in with additional suggestions/words of advice/encouragement. I. is a mother of an 11-month old who has had severe reflux problems from birth. She wrote:

"…And then came teething (he got his first tooth at nine and a
half months; now he's working on his fourth – it's been non-stop teething for
almost two months, which really has not helped the sleep situation) and his
first cold, both at the same time. He couldn't sleep at all lying down; he'd
choke and wake up. One of us would sleep in the recliner with him, so he could be
upright. And by the time he was better, he just would not sleep anywhere else. And
he got harder and harder to get to sleep, too; he'd fight it.

Right now, his good nights look like this:

10:00 – Nurse. Asleep by 11:00, in his crib.

12:00 or 1:00 – Wake up. Nurse for 20 minutes, followed by
20 minutes of holding to get into deep sleep before he goes into his crib. (If
he's put down before then, he cries and we risk a complete wake-up.)

2:00 or 3:00 – Wake up. Nurse for 20 minutes. Go back to
sleep, but only on a person; at this point, he just will not go back to sleep
if he's not with a person, so one of us ends up sleeping in the recliner with
him.

7:00 – Wake up for the morning.

And on his bad nights, anything can happen – he doesn't go
to sleep until 12 or one, then he's up every hour all night long, with an hour
and a half in the middle of the night where he's totally awake and ready to
party. Or he just won't sleep at all except on a person.

He tends to make up for it by sleeping more in the daytime;
after bad nights, he'll get more sleep during the day (always and only on a
person, though; I cosleep with him at every nap, because otherwise there is no
napping) than he did at night.

It's not really a sleep pattern so much as a sleep
dysfunction at this point. We'd cheerfully cosleep with him in the bed if we
thought it was safe, but our bed is really high and has no rails, so he'd have
to sleep between us, and we're both large people and my partner is a heavy
sleeper, so we're a little worried about that. (One possibility would be to get
a new bed, or to get bed rails for this one. If that's what it will take, we'll
do that.)

Our pediatrician has advised crying it out. But intense,
long crying spells tend to lead to reflux episodes, which leads to a) more
crying and b) vomiting, and by the time he's soothed, cleaned up, and changed,
he's awake,
so crying it out seems like a bad idea for him. (Also, I really don't
think we can take it; time and again, we've been the parents who caved
after a minute of crying. We'd both rather be up all night than let him
cry, in all honesty.)

Other people keep telling us that it's the nine-month sleep
regression, but – he's eleven months old. It seems like this is more than that.

Any advice would be very, very welcome. I'd especially welcome
suggestions for a sleep training method we can use, and some idea of
when to start it, and any ideas about what we can do in the meantime."

Oh man… this sounds so hard for everyone: your poor baby and his "growing pains", what with the reflux, teething, and first cold and poor you coping with trying to soothe a baby in pain all the while terribly sleep-deprived . As I see it, there are many parts to this sleeping "question":

1. Reflux problems and the associated sleep situation that requires mom or dad to sleep with the baby upright on a recliner.

2. The child's developmental age.

3. Frequent night wakings, sometimes completely unpredictable.

4. The child being overtired when nights are bad and compensating with longer naps during the day.

5. The desire/need for you guys to co-sleep but the obstacles therein.

6. The need to change the sleeping situation with an appropriate method that works for the whole family.

PHEW!  Did I get it all? It really does seem like some change is required for the whole family to get more rest and feel better. I know there are many parents out there who have dealt with reflux
problems and have found various solutions along the way. Given that you've been dealing with reflux problems with your boy since birth, you're probably an expert yourself by now. That's not my
area of expertise, so I'm hoping others will join in with their words
of wisdom on that front.

So, let me start with #2: Even though he's 11 months, he most certainly still can be in the throes of this developmental transition that starts around 8/9 months. He should be heading out of it soon, and in the next couple of weeks, you can start trying to implement a new plan. IOW, it's good timing to make a change.

#3 and 4 are connected. The frequent night wakings may be in part a function of your child being overtired which, in turn, has an impact on his napping situation, and so on. You may have heard from way too many people that children often have a harder time going down, sleep fitfully, and LESS, when they're overtired. Although Weissbluth seems to suggest that this is a new insight, our grandmothers and nannies have known this forever. My first suggestion to you would be to try to put your baby down "for the night" at an earlier time, especially given how early he still wakes up (7 am). Some kids wake up late (at around 9pm) and so they go to sleep for the night later as well (10 pm or so). This difference in sleep windows is often culturally determined and often reflects a preference for later nights and mornings on the parents' part (as well as the child's). That's all good if the child is getting adequate amounts of sleep. But in your case, that may not be the case given your description. So, my first suggestion would be to try aiming for a significantly earlier bed time, like 7 pm or 8 pm. You probably won't be able to make this change immediately (although it may be worth a try). So, you can gradually inch his bedtime earlier and earlier over the course of a week or two. Although not all babies respond well to this, many do. And counter-intuitively, many babies sleep longer when they're put down earlier.

#5 may be the most straightforward one to tackle. If you and your husband want to co-sleep and you think this will be the best way for all of you to maximize your sleep, then go for it. If you can afford a new, bigger bed that will make everyone more comfortable this may help. Some bed rails may work, but I'd be cautious about how safe they are for wriggling, soon-to-be toddlers. Also, keep in mind that this is a change in your sleeping situation that may last for a long time. If you and your husband like the idea of long-term co-sleeping, great. But if you want to just do it for a month or two to get out of a "bad patch", then you might want to consider what your ideal sleep situation would be instead and work towards that. Your baby is entering a great, relatively stable, resilient stage very soon. This new stage is a window during which you can shift sleep patterns; a lot easier than making changes during the 18-21 month period!

Finally, #6: I'm not big on advising any sleep-training method over another without knowing a family very well. My approach is more along the lines of providing all the possibilities and letting you choose what best fits your parenting style. In our book, I reviewed the main sleep-training methods and the pros and cons of each (it would take pages and pages to do that again here and it probably infringes on some copyright issue or another). You're obviously not into CIO methods, so stay clear of any of those. For the life of me I can't understand why pediatricians advise families to carry out sleep-training methods that go against the parents' own general approach: it's insensitive for one, there's no empirical research to suggest any of the more extreme CIO methods work any better than the more systematic non-CIO method, and the advice is doomed to fail if parents don't feel comfortable following through with the method consistently.  (Gah. I'll get off my soapbox now. Sorry.) More importantly, full-out CIO sounds like it would not be a good thing for your baby, given his serious reflux problems that get exacerbated when he cries a lot. There are gentle, "no cry" techniques that have worked for many families (Pantley is the guru for this approach). These are methods that allow you to gradually change sleep conditions while still providing some level of comfort and support for your baby. There's more graduated methods like Ferber's, that does allow for kids to cry, but for short periods that you can control. Other "controlled crying" approaches suggest allowing the child some fussing and crying before falling asleep, but remaining with him while he does so. And of course there's various co-sleeping arrangements, which the Sears folks have written about extensively.

Can anyone suggest specific methods that have worked for you in a similar situation? Any words of advice for I. on transitioning to a co-sleeping arrangement? What about the problem of reflux and how it fits into solving these sleep problems?

4 months Part I: So hard and so normal

4-5.5 months

I'll start with a confession. When my boys were 4 months, I hit my wall. I was so sleep deprived; I often got 2-4 hours of sleep / night for weeks. On a good night when my husband took several night feedings, I would get 5 hours of sleep (I know, this seems like HEAVEN for some of you right now, but I'm a sleep wuss so I couldn't cope well even with that "much" sleep). I NEEDED my brain back. So the first time we tried sleep training, the boys were 4 months. The short story is that it was a miserable failure… I was a miserable failure. There was no pattern to how often they'd wake up and how long they'd cry.  Although we'd TRY to be consistent and implement a sleep-training plan (not CIO, but still some crying was happening all the time) there always seemed to be some major issue that one or the other of the boys was going through: one started teething as early as 4 months, one would be hungry constantly and needed to  "cluster feed," the swaddle seemed too confining, the swaddle seemed too loose, one had flipped on his stomach, the other didn't burp before being put down, and so on. In sum, it sucked. And there seemed too many variables at work, too many possible and impossible baby reasons for them to legitimately need a better, less wimpy, more kick-ass, responsive, sensitive mom. So, after about a week of banging our heads against the wall with some pretty basic sleep-training methods, I gave up. And then I proceeded to lose my mind for the next 2 months. The only thing that got me through it was knowing that it was TEMPORARY. I knew I had a plan and I would put it in place… at 6 months.

Mine is not a unique or even particularly interesting story. It is SO common. So what's the deal with this age? Four months is the beginning of a major stage transition in cognitive development. Babies at this age are now beginning to coordinate simple actions, like reaching and grasping, into routines that have a deliberate impact on the world. Now your baby can actually reach what he’s aiming for, put it in his mouth, and explore it. That means that objects are accessible, reachable, touchable, and YUM, suckable. But more than that, babies at this age are beginning to develop expectations. They start being able to PREDICT what's going to happen in the world. When they reach, they expect what they reach for to be there. Having this prediction confirmed time after time gives them a sense that their actions are causing a particular effect. Piaget termed this level of cause-effect thinking “magico-phenomenalistic causality” (ah, yes, we psychologist are so hip with our terms…), which just means that the baby has a kind of magical expectation that his actions will produce desirable effects. With respect to people, these growing expectations are the key to gratifying exchanges of smiles and gestures; it's that incredibly social "aha" time when the baby realizes when I coo to mummy, she'll laugh, when I laugh, she'll laugh back! Babies will now make a noise in order to elicit a smile from the parent. A time when attention to other people is not just a static state of awestruck delight (like at 3 months and before), but a state of turn-taking, when every noise, every gesture, is offered in order to get a response from the other person. That response means everything. And so, in the middle of the night, perhaps during dreams, certainly when babies wake up throughout the night or during the "middle" of their nap, this is what they're most concerned with: re-engaging that power to socially connect, experiment with, and play with the most important people in their worlds.

When we try to sleep train at this age, we need, at some point (like, at 4 in the morning!), to cut off this quest for a reaction. And babies are not usually happy about this. If they coo, they want you to goo-goo back. ALL. THE. TIME. If they cry, they want you to run and soothe them. EVERY. TIME. They're playing with these cause and effect relationships and they want to feel like they've mastered this little world that continues to grow for them.

In short, the four month stage transition is as magnificent as it is crazy-making. I think one of the hardest parts of this time is that most parents have reached the end of their sleep-deprivation ropes. It's around this time that many of us lose all that adrenaline we've been running on and the realization of how difficult it all is, and how long it could go on for, hits hard. Maybe for some of us, an equally bad part of this stage is that we've lost much of the social support we had when our babies were newborns and our kind mothers, friends and neighbours brought us freezable dinners and words of sympathy that made us feel a little less alone. Also, many parents have to return to work around this time in their baby's life and oftentimes this seems like an impossible transition to make.

I'll post some more details about the amazing new ways that 4-month olds start thinking and feeling about their worlds. But for now, how are you coping with the 4-month stage? What's the hardest part for your family? If you've already been through this period, what do you remember about this time in your family's life?

Do you feel guilty about sleep training?

Oh... the guilt

    While we're on the topic of guilt… I'd like to ask you all: How do you feel about starting to sleep train, if you haven't yet? If you have sleep-trained, were you confident about that choice before you made it? Were you anxious, confused, did you feel guilty about it? Or were you simply at your wit's end when you came to the decision to sleep train your child?
    From my experience, many parents feel awful about finally coming to the decision that they MUST sleep train their kid because they can no longer function as one of the walking dead. But putting your own sleeping needs (desperate as they may be) before your baby’s sense of emotional security seems like the epitome of poor parenting. Mothers in particular are often given the message by the media, friends and family (including fellow mothers, unfortunately) that their first and only priority should be their child’s happiness. Parents’ own health and well-being should be considered secondary, if at all.
    We started off our book trying to dispel this dangerous myth right away. From our perspective, parents who are considering sleep-training their babies for reasons beyond just the well-being of their child (gasp!) are not only perfectly normal, but are doing the right thing. A seriously sleep-deprived family can become an unhappy, unhealthy one.  And this unhealthy state of affairs has massive implications for parenting and the child’s long-term well-being. Here are some of the facts we compiled about the necessity of sleep.

  • A new baby typically deprives parents of 400-750 hours of sleep in the first year
  • Being awake for 17 hours straight leads to the same kind of impairment as a blood alcohol level of .05% (in other words, you could be arrested for driving at that level of impairment)
  • Fatigue is involved in approximately 1 in 6 fatal road accidents
  • Sleep deprivation affects both long- and short-term memory 
  • High-level problem-solving skills are most impaired by lack of sleep (this would include figuring out the best way to make your child sleep better, making the right choices for childcare, figuring out how to mix the formula, avoid allergens, give the right dose of reflux medication, and so on)
  • Prolonged sleep-deprivation has been repeatedly linked to depression (and many studies have shown that untreated maternal depression can have serious long-term effects on child adjustment)
  • Some studies have shown that women need an hour more sleep than men per night; not getting this extra sleep may be one reason why women are far more susceptible to depression than men
  • The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors due to sleep deprivation

So, from my perspective, your sleep is as important as your baby’s. Again, that's because sleep affects the kind of parent you are which, in turn, has an impact on your child's development. You just can’t be the parent you want to be if you’re exhausted, crabby, irritable, and irrational. And when parents don’t get enough sleep at night, the household starts to fall apart. Quite literally, your parenting, your work, and oftentimes the quality of your marriage will start to unravel if you don’t get enough sleep to feel and function normally.

Papa sleep My husband is constantly amazed about how torn and guilty parents
feel about considering sleep training their children. He doesn't
understand it because to him it's obvious: Parents need adequate sleep
to function well as parents. Babies need us to help them figure out what's safe, predictable and good for them. I, on the other hand, understand the mixed
feelings too well.

So, why do we feel so guilty when we consider sleep training our children? Is it a mom thing? Are we simply defenseless to the cries of our babies? Is it evolutionarily futile to try to crawl out of the swamp of hormones to recognize our own needs? Who is that voice in our heads saying "you are so selfish?" Is it more of a problem with societal expectations of super mom? And if you've never felt guilty about sleep training, how have you approached this challenge with confidence?

Anyone in Toronto want to get together IRL?

Uncategorized

For those of you who live in Toronto and are interested in meeting other Moxie-inspired mothers in the area, we're organizing a little evening get-together this Wednesday, May 6, around 7:30. If you're interested, leave a comment and we can figure out somewhere downtown to meet that would be easiest for all of us.  I know this is last minute, so if you're interested in this sort of get-together but can't make this time and date, please leave a comment with preferred dates and times and we'll set up a second meet-up soon.

We can also do a daytime/park outing with all the kids in tow as well.  What would you prefer for the next one?

Hope to see some of you in person soon!