Sleep!

From Isaac in early August

After much debate, Josh and I decided to try the sleep training program that Jenn and Paul used with Maya. It's called the Sleepeasy Solution, but really the advice is pretty ubiquitous: put your baby down in his crib awake for naps and bedtime. You can still nurse at night, it's just that Mom goes to baby an hour before he usually wakes up crying and encourages him (gently) to feed at the earlier time instead of "on demand" when he's crying and she's trying to soothe him.

So here's the results: AMAZING! First, you need to know where we've been. At first, Isaac was a fantastic sleeper but depended on the swaddle to get deep sleep. He quickly outgrew the swaddle and Josh and I suddenly had a horrible sleeper on our hands. Basically, sleep for the last month meant Isaac and I in the guest bed and Josh in our bed by himself. Isaac would cry about every hour and I'd nurse him every time to help him fall asleep again. I was getting only max two continuous hours of sleep without interruption and I've been incredibly sleep deprived because of it. I've felt extra moody, headache-y and I've made mistakes at work because of it (nothing too big).

SO, Friday night, we put Isaac to sleep awake and then braced ourselves for the crying. And...it never came! He spent twenty minutes making an "arrrr" sound that did not even come close to crying--trust me, unfortunately I know what his sad cry sounds like. I then "dream-nursed" him at 11pm, 2am and 4am. He cried for less than 10 minutes around 1:15 and so we did ONE check on him (no touching--only loving words). Then, at 6am, I woke him up! It was amazing. He was in his crib and I was in my bed with Josh at 5:59am--a first in weeks.

Saturday, we encouraged him to take naps every 2-2.5 hours and every time, he was awake when I finished nursing and put him in his crib. He slept something like 5 hours on Saturday. Here's the deal: babies his age should sleep about 3-4 hours everyday, but Isaac was sleeping more like an hour because naps were so hard for him. You can imagine that it must have felt crazy for him. Remarkably, the deep sleep Friday night made him more sleepy for the Saturday naps and he didn't cry AT ALL for any of them. In exchange though, he was super cranky and tired when he was awake.

Saturday night we did our bedtime routine again (bath, pjs, nursing and an O-M family rendition of "Waters of Babylon"). Immediate sleep. I dreamnursed again but moved the times to help him with the 1am waking (11pm, 1am). I was too tired to reset the alarm for another nurse and man did Isaac know it. He woke up at ~4am crying his head off. Josh tried doing checks, but the man was hungry. Eventually, I broke down and said, "it's light out so it's morning now." I went into Isaac's room and said that to my baby and then happily nursed him. Thankfully, Josh gave me an hour to keep sleeping after that because I was just starting to catch up on long-lost sleep and was very tired. Naps today were frequent and pretty flawless. My favorite nap was at Danielle and Zev's house. I put Isaac to sleep awake on their bed (don't worry--he can't roll, but still, he was in the middle of their king sized bed). Daniellle then put Izzy to sleep in his bed in their room. The cousins were having a sleepover for about an hour when it ended with Izzy's cry. We went in to find Izzy upset and Isaac blinking at us quietly on the bed. He was totally fine with getting up then anyway. Today, he's had about 4-5 hrs of naps.

In the "extra" time that Josh and I have gained by having him nap more, we organized our house, I made homemade pickles, worked on my lab meeting, I went to yoga and Josh ran 7 miles and I made baba ganoush. Right now, instead of being passed out on the guest bed after nursing, I am writing about my awesome weekend. Pretty sweet.