After months of questioning and reading about how to best help Lucy sleep, we were led into a new course of action on Friday. Let’s put it this way: there’s a smidge of crying involved.
We had been considering letting Lucy “cry it out” for some time, especially since we were having no success with the other methods we’d been using to get Lucy through her “45-minute evening wake-up”:http://boydsnest.org/news/2006/lucys-troublesome-habit/. But Lucy is such a passionate person that there’s already quite a lot of crying around here — did we want even more?
But then on Friday night, Lucy walked us right into this new regime. She went to bed easily, as usual, but woke up at 45 minutes and just wouldn’t return to sleep. Nothing worked, not patting, not standing by her crib, not even nursing her to sleep! We had tried getting her out of bed at this point in the past, but she usually seemed extra tired for the next day. We had just been getting her on an even more regular schedule of naps than before, so she was well-rested. And Jon had just been reading up on the so-called “extinction” (or “let them cry”) method in Weissbluth
Lucy chatted to herself for about twenty minutes, then began to cry — not very hard, but consistently, with some pauses — for over two hours. Jon and I prayed for her, and then watched a “movie”:http://imdb.com/title/tt0196229/ to get our minds off the crying. At some point, I started crying, too. I felt so sorry for Lucy, and I worried that our non-intervention would wound her in some way. But it seemed clearly to be the right step. We couldn’t do anything to help her get to sleep; she needed to do this herself. Her crying at bedtime is all protest: it sounds frustrated and mad and sleepy, not at all scared. And we knew that if we caved, it would just undo all of the hard work she had been putting in. (Consistency is more than half the battle here.)
p{color:gray}. Photo: Lucy, the day after her marathon sleep-protest.
That night, I had a dream: we went on vacation with Lucy to a rustic lodge, and we had let her cry herself to sleep in the next room. In the dream, we went to get Lucy upon waking, and noticed that the footies on her pajamas were all shredded — it was the work of rats nibbling on her toes all night. Can you say, “maternal guilt”?
In real life, Lucy awoke happy and refreshed, footies intact. The next evening, she cut the evening crying in half — only a little over an hour. And the third night she once again cut it down, almost in half again to about 40 minutes. We hope that she’ll keep slicing the minutes off till she doesn’t need to protest much at all in the evening.
Each day she has had better naps and better night sleep over the past few days than she has in a very long time. She is routinely taking two-hour naps twice a day and getting about 12 hours of sleep at night. Lucy no longer gets very hyper or over-excited, and she seems clearly happier and “more smiley”:http://boydsnest.org/news/2006/happy-birthday-grandma/ than ever.
For me and Jon, this is a most welcome relief. We hadn’t realized just how tense our household was. Every night, we were on edge: would Lucy wake up after 45 minutes? would we be able to soothe her? or would we have to get her up to wear her out? It was hard for us to relax and do anything in the evenings. Now, we are even considering the possibility that we could get a babysitter and actually go out in the evenings, something we haven’t done (in the evenings) since Lucy was about “eight weeks old”:http://boydsnest.org/news/2006/first-date/.
I’m grateful that God led us into this new path and for all of the advice we received about different sleep methods. I’m conscious of the tension around the issue of sleep for so many moms. While I don’t think this style does or should work for everybody, I do believe that it is a very good choice for our family at this point. It has brought up some questions for me about my belief in my own power as a mother: Can I trust God to care for Lucy’s sleep in this way? Am I willing to release my desire for Lucy to not cry, if it means Lucy can get good sleep and be happy for the rest of the day? Can I relinquish my fears about her feeling abandoned, and trust that God will talk to me about that if need be? Can I allow Lucy to have the feelings she has, even if they make me uncomfortable or force me to question my power as her mother? I feel like God has put these questions on the blackboard for me, and it really fits with my growing edges these days.
These are real questions, and for most parents finding the answers isn’t easy — even if it can look that way in retrospect.
I really appreciated the wisdom I got from Deborah on the phone the other day: “You could always just try it for a week. If it doesn’t work well for Lucy or you, then you can do something else.” Her graciousness and encouragement reminded me that we weren’t going to break Lucy by letting her cry. If it didn’t work, we would apologize and Lucy would undoubtedly forgive us. (Good principles to remember for years to come.) As it turns out, we think our whole family might be more relaxed and better rested as a result. Who knew?
Great! Especially good job Debo for giving Ann and Jon the courage to try it. I think we were fairly hard-nosed about it, which was tough at first (and yes, one floor at that point, and very loud screamer) but it paid off. On the other hand, ours slept through quite early once she did fall asleep, perhaps because the formula sticks to their ribs more. But we still tend to go up once, even as a toddler now, for a little snuggle time or potty check, and then let her cry. Luckily, this is pretty rare – usually only if she woke up quite late from her nap, which makes sense.
K-D
Ann what a beautiful post….thanks for sharing both your success and concerns. I have found that raising my kids has been as much about my relationship with God as about shepherding theirs.
When Alex and Joseph were babies and we were working through sleep stuff alongside my sister, her husband and my niece who is 4 months older, I was always convinced that God would never let us cry it out. That he was always there to rescue us as soon as we called out to him….More and more in my life I am seeing that sometimes God lets me cry it out….to protest what He is giving me at the time knowing that he is there but that he wants me to grow in new ways. I stand on scriptures that reaffirm that He will never leave me or forsake me….but I am realizing that sometimes he is next to me gently holding my hand while I step out in obediance to the things protested. Things like forgiving someone who has deeply hurt me or asking for forgivness. I am thankful for the times that God lets me “cry it out” because my relationship is deeper…but it is not easy when I am doing the crying.
The questions you are asking are encouraging and I feel the need to ask them of myself with my own children again. No it is not easy and often in retrospect it does not look any easier. And sometimes it feels that there are more questions than answers but then the tide turns again and there is rest for awhile until we need to cry it out again, ask some more hard questions and surrender AGAIN!
Blessings to all three of you.
I have been praying for you guys with the sleep-issue! Praise God that things are improving so much.
We are going through the exact same thing over here with Christine. We started letting her cry starting last Monday, and it has made a HUGE improvement.
She was also waking up after 45 min. and taking 4 mini-naps during the day and waking up 4 times at night. She was tired & cranky, and I was DYING.
Now for the past 3-4 days, she is taking 2 long naps and only one night wake-up (and that is coming later and later each night, so hopefully she is on her way to sleeping through it completely.) If she wakes up after 45 min, she cries for a few minutes and goes back to sleep (I hope she’s learning that no one is going to come get her anyway so she should just go back to sleep).
Christine is definitely a shrieker, so I figure the longer we wait, she will only get older, smarter, stronger, & louder.
I have a question about the diaper though: do you just leave the same diaper on overnight for 10-12 hours?
Thank you so much for your posts. You are such an encouragement to me!!
Nicole, I too see periods of God leaving me to “cry it out” for a time while he is inviting me to learn a new skill or grow up in a new way. Never easy for me, and I was often angry that God would “leave” me to do this. But now, as a parent, I can more easily imagine how hard it was for God to give me space at those times, but that he did it knowing what was best for me. May God give us grace to know what is best for our children at these times!
Grace — so great to hear from you! And I’m glad things are going well with Christine and sleeping. Yes, we leave a diaper on Lucy for about 12 hours. We’ve been doing this since she was four months old, and it has worked fine. If you are concerned about diaper rash, you can always put a good amount of cream on her butt before bedtime. And we have found that, when in between sizes of diapers, it is always worth it to use the larger size for nighttime.
Congratulations you guys on taking the plunge! I think sometimes it’s hardest before you make the decision (and probably the very first night you try it). But then as they sleep better and better and cry less, you realize how worth it it was.
We also always left a diaper on Benjamin for 12 hours at night (still do). When he was younger and had really sensitive skin, we would put vasoline on him to prevent a rash (works great to prevent rash and is nicer to work with than the cream). We actually used it at every diaper change until he was probably 8 months old or so – if we left it off and he pooped he would always get a rash even if we changed him right away just because his skin was so sensitive.
A bit of extra detail about Ann’s comment, to clarify: even though we normally use cloth diapers during the day, we use a disposable at night, which we’ve found can handle the longer duration admirably (even for our “heavy wetter”). And it’s a good thing: since Lucy still likes to be swaddled, it’s particularly hard to change her diaper during the night.
Hey, we too use fb during the day and paper at night…same reasons. It is good to hear others do the same. I felt a little guilty doing it, as we hate the amount of waste the paper makes. But the night time bed changes were a bit too much. We do the AD with every diaper because, like Ben, Maddy gets a rash at the thought of a poopy diaper, but lubing them up works wonders.
Question: when Lucy wakes do you go in at all? or just let her go?
I never know if I should go in and just check her (diaper/temp) or let her go.
Maddy just got really sick (106 temp) and we have had a week of going in every 30 to 60 mins because she woke up with a fever and need to drink water. But now that she is almost over the bug I don’t know when I should just let her “go”. Any thoughts?
Sorry to hear that Maddy’s been sick! I’m glad she is feeling better.
I have the same question about knowing when to make an exception and go in to visit Lucy. I’m sure the time will come when Lucy has a fever, or teething pain, and we’ll need to figure it out. Usually, Lucy’s cries sound a lot different when she is in pain/uncomfortable as opposed to just cranky about having to go to sleep. Hopefully we’ll be able to figure it out.
Right now, we go in basically twice a night to feed her. Once for a “dream feed” at around eleven (but we’ve been waiting for her to call for this since starting the new regime, instead of pre-emptively going in and feeding her) and once around four. I think she could probably cut at least one of these feedings out, but we are going to wait to work on that until the evening thing is more routine, and until she is actually eating some solids (not just smearing them all over her face).
Another question I had: what does this look like when you go on vacation or out of town? We are planning a trip with some friends in January. I think we’ll be able to just follow our same pattern, but will Lucy be weirded out by the new environment?
Oh, another thing: Jon’s mom pointed out a pertinent _New York Times_ “article”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/health/12sleep.html [free registration required].
We would usually wait 5 – 10 minutes before going to check on Benjamin. I think it’s sometimes hard to judge their cries in the middle of the night, so waiting a couple minutes to see if he would calm down was always a good idea for us. If he started waking at the same time every night and there was nothing wrong with him, we would then have to let him cry it out until he dropped the habit (which generally only took 1 – 2 nights and he never cried for more than 45 min.) We did end up getting crib bumpers because there were a few times we found him with his arm or leg stuck out of the crib and the bumpers were helpful to know that he wasn’t crying because of that!
If he wakes up during the night now, at 18 months of age, which is extremely rare, we go right in because it usually does mean something is wrong. Sometimes I wonder if he wakes up and can’t figure out where he is or something because we go in, pick him up, walk up and down the hall one time and put him back to bed and then he is fine. Or perhaps having the new baby in the house has just confused him a bit… who knows.
As far as trips go – we would try to maintain as much consistency as possible, but were generally more lax with him when traveling. First of all, if we were in a hotel, we didn’t want to bother the neighbors with him crying! Second of all, the new environment did tend to confuse him a bit, so I always figured a couple extra nursing sessions weren’t going to hurt anything. Once we got back home, we went back to the regular routine and he would fall back into a normal sleeping pattern.
I have another question: what do you do about your milk at night?
At first, I woke up at 2am to pump, but that defeats the whole point of getting to sleep through the night. Then, I didn’t pump, but when I woke up I had soaked the whole front of my t-shirt and sweatshirt. Plus, I don’t want to get plugged ducts again. (Ouch! I had that once and want to avoid it at all costs!)
Do you just get used to waking up in the morning being very “full”?
Jack and I are thinking about dear little LUCIA MARTHA today especially as we celebrate Sancta Lucia day here in our new Scandanavian enclave. I have always loved the story, and I was very excited when you chose that beautiful name (not sure of your inspiration for it) – it is one that has been a favorite of mine! We did attend a Sancta Lucia pageant last week – would have preferred to have it today! But it was beautiful and charming as children and candles and music are the focus – all appeal to me tremendously. I remember Jon’s Swedish exposure as a young child – sometime Jon I would love to hear about what memories you still have of that year. Your pictures of Lucy are just delightful! They are so expressive and it is great to be able to watch her change and “see” her in different situations. This last one is adorable – you just want to reach out and pick her up and give her a squeeze! (but I am not the one she kept awake! :-) Being grandparent friends is MUCH easier!). Much love to LUCIA and her wonderful parents from us – Nani Nancy and Grampy Jack
Thanks, Nancy, for the sweet note! We look forward to seeing you sometime soon!
Grace — I think your body will get used to the change. I’ve never been a super-abundant milk-producer, so I haven’t experienced some of these problems. (Plus, we aren’t trying to eliminate night feeds with Lucy yet — just starting with the evening put-down first.) I have heard that cabbage leaves in the bra help with engorgement? I’m sure you are using nursing pads in your bra, even doubling them up? I bet that it will take a few days for your body to adjust. But other people might have better ideas…
For the milk at night – I would wake up very full in the morning. A couple things you can do to manage the leaks – I would sleep in a bra (I really like the bravado nursing sleep bras – they resemble a sports bra) with a thick nursing pad. This would keep me from leaking all over. If I leaked really bad I would put a towel under me as well just to keep the sheets clean.
For the clogged ducts, I would check for any clogged ducts while showering and then massage them if I found any to help relieve the clog. You can also massage any blocked ducts while nursing to help get rid of the block.
After the baby starts sleeping through the night regularly, your breasts should adjust and you shouldn’t be so overly full in the morning anymore. I can’t say how long it takes to adjust as I can’t remember – it was quite a while ago for me now! It probably varies person to person anyway.
you can also just continue to pump, but less and less each time so your body has time to adjust. This shouldn’t take long at all. I am a huge milk producer and am always “full”. I don’t remember the last time I didn’t have a bra + pad on. But to slow down the production you just have to slowly demand less from them. I also stopped using the pump if I was elminating a session and would go to manual expression, this just relieved enough of the pressure to make me more comfortable, and helped my body know that Maddy didn’t need as much at that time.
Yeah, you have to be careful with the pump because if you have a double electric pump it can actually stimulate your body to produce more milk. But definitely always check for plugged ducts as this is the best way to prevent an infection. My favorite pads for nighttime are the Gerber Heavy Flow disposable nursing pads.
Ann, I’m glad Lucy’s sleeping better! We’ve been out of town for a few days, so I’m just now catching up on all things Boyd. :)