The Life and Times of Baby Gordon

A Good Night's Sleep (Almost)

Madeleine slept through the night last night. Glory glory!

It was a big surprise because she hasn't been sleeping well at all the past few nights. The nanny, Andrew and I think she has begun teething. She is very fussy during the day for Clelia, and her eating patterns have been strange — for example, she'll cry as if she's very hungry, but when Clelia fixes her a bottle she eats an ounce then rejects it. She is drooling like crazy and gnawing on everything she can. The past few nights she has been restless, and after several weeks of only getting up once or twice at night to eat, she's been up three or four times a night this week. In fact, Wednesday night around 10:45 she woke up crying more violently than she has in a long time, a loud wail that sounded like pain more than hunger. We gave her a little Baby Tylenol and she was all smiles again, but still restless the rest of the night.

Last night Andrew had a work dinner, so I bathed Maddie and put her to bed by myself. I was sure we were in for it. She started getting tired around 6:45; after the bath, we read two stories and started to nurse, but after five minutes of nursing she began squirming and fussing. I gave her a pacifier and rocked her, but her eyes were open wide and she was fidgety. I tried putting her down in the crib and she squirmed and whined, so I picked her up again and rocked her for a few minutes. She got sleepy and rolled over on her side when I put her back down in the crib.

While I was eating dinner, watching TV and waiting for Andrew to come home, I continued to hear her stir. Oh boy, this is going to be a rotten night, I thought. She would whimper for a minute or two, then get quiet again. Around 10:30, she started making more noise, sounding like she was really awake and needing to eat. But when I went downstairs to feed her, she was actually fast asleep — and talking in her sleep!

I went to bed expecting to be awakened at any moment by a cranky kid. So imagine my surprise when I woke up at 3 a.m. and realized that the baby was still asleep. The baby was still asleep! A short time later I heard her stir again — her usual "eh eh eh" sounds that indicate she's ramping up and about to get angry. But, when I headed downstairs to feed her (knowing from experience that it's better to intercept her before she gets too worked up), she was still asleep, and perfectly quiet.

She continued throughout the rest of the night to make noise for a few minutes and then settle back down. I was able to get up and take a shower before she finally started making her morning noises. "She's going to be pissed off when she realizes how hungry she is," Andrew said.

We went down to say good morning to her. When we opened the door, we could see her little head over the crib bumper, popped up and looking around. She gave us a brilliant smile when we approached the crib to say good morning. I rolled her over on her back. She's had a little runny nose, presumably from the teething, and because she sleeps with her face in the sheet, her face was covered with dried snot! She had one big rectangular booger stuck on her upper lip, which Andrew called her "booger Hitler." Then, instead of the creeping realization that she was starving and the complete meltdown that we expected, she rolled over and started spinning the lobster on her Fisher Price aquarium. She spun it and spun it until we finally intervened, reasoning that we would probably be there all day long. Maddie was in no hurry for breakfast.

Except when I finally did feed her, she ate greedily and noisily. Between her stuffy nose and her extreme hunger, she snorted and grunted her way through the feeding. But afterwards, she was a joy. We're hoping that she realizes how good she feels after a great night of sleep, and decides to continue the pattern! I unfortunately didn't get to enjoy all the benefits of it because I was up so much waiting for her to wake up, but I still feel much better this morning than I have in a very long time.

Sweet Siesta

At 3:00 this morning, Madeleine woke up. I put my glasses on and placed one foot on the floor, then lay there willing myself to get out of bed.

Then, Andrew leaped out of bed instead.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going downstairs to feed Maddie," he replied.

I was confused because Andrew usually takes the first feeding of the night. After that, I nurse her every time she wakes up until morning.

I checked the clock again. 3 a.m. Maddie had been asleep for six and a half hours, a new record (her longest stretch was six hours on Thanksgiving, a fluke that we suspect was brought on by tryptophan, pinot noir and a toasty warm room). We put her to bed at 7 last night since she had barely napped yesterday. She woke up a couple of times, and I nursed her back to sleep at 8:30. She half awoke one more time, and Andrew rocked her back to sleep within minutes. And then she slept straight through. Amazing!

Then, Andrew fed her at 3, and she slept after that until 6:30 without a peep.

This from a kid who was getting up every hour and a half four weeks ago.

You've come a long way, baby.

Do Not Disturb ...

We've discovered that our cell phones occasionally cause loud interference/feedback on the baby monitor (and/or white noise machine), not good news when sound sleep is so precarious to begin with. Every time Maddie goes down for a nap, we have to remind ourselves to turn off our cell phones.

Boing Boing this morning blogged about the new Philips interference-free baby monitor. At $200, it's not a luxury we are going to spring for, but it's a fantastic idea.

Sleep News

Last night was a banner night for Madeleine in the sleep department. And it couldn't have come at a better time! Since I started back to work, even though Andrew is taking one of the big feedings in the middle of the night, the constant night wakings have left me exhausted and very concerned.

We've been working on letting Maddie put herself back to sleep. The pacifier has helped tremendously with that task, and in the past few nights we've noticed that she's crying less, and if she does fuss it tends to be more babbling than crying. She's been putting herself to sleep at bedtime relatively easily, and occasionally we work on letting her go back to sleep without being nursed, especially when she wakes up less than two hours after a feeding.

Our pediatrician assured us that 3-month-old babies can go six hours at night without eating. Making her wait six hours seems a little harsh to me, but at this point I would have been happy with three-hour stretches! So yesterday Andrew and I agreed that we were going to let her wait it out: if she woke up before three hours were up, we were going to let her put herself back to sleep.

I was encouraged going into the evening because Andrew had had a major naptime success yesterday. She went down for a nap in her crib without a fight! His creative solution was to put her in the crib with her pacifier and stay with her. He turned on the mobile a few times and did some tasks around her room (putting clothes away, etc.) while popping over to say hi to her every few minutes. Eventually she relaxed and zoned out, so when he left the room she rolled onto her side and went to sleep. All the signs are pointing to the fact that Maddie is becoming more comfortable sleeping in her crib, and putting herself to sleep without the aid of rocking, nursing or the swing.

Last night, lights out was at 8:30. According to her typical pattern, she woke up again at 9:15. The pediatrician recommended nursing her again after her first waking, even if she had a lot to eat only 45 minutes before, so that she goes into her night with a full belly. I went down and nursed her for 10 minutes or so and she fell asleep.

She slept soundly — no waking up and fussing at all — until 12:30, which is great considering that she's been waking up every two hours or less for the past several nights. Andrew went down and fed her 3 oz. of breast milk from a bottle. After he changed her and put her back to bed, she cried a little and was restless, so I went downstairs and "topped her off" with a short feeding around 1:15. After that ... she slept until 5:00! Amazing. And she didn't wake up and cry one time in those four hours. I nursed her again this morning and she went back down in her crib and was still asleep at 7:15 when I left, another accomplishment since she's lately been very restless in the mornings.

I'm hoping that this is the beginning of a healthier sleep pattern for all of us!

Sleep Update

Last night was night 3 of sleep training, the night that things are supposed to start falling into place. The daytime had gone well, though we were out and about and Maddie slipped into sleep in her car seat at just the times she was supposed to. But when I put her down for a nap around 5:00, she cried and cried, sometimes to the point of screaming, for a total of an hour and a half (falling asleep for a short period during that time, and then waking up again), before finally conking out for a half hour.

So naturally I was nervous about bedtime. We put her to bed a little later because of her late nap. She cried for awhile, per usual, but finally dropped off around 9:55. I've noticed that for the past few nights her sleep intervals seem to be exactly the same, so just as she has previously she awoke an hour later wanting to eat. I fed her for 10 minutes and she conked out. So I put her in the crib, and unlike ever before, she rolled around a little then rolled to one side and went to sleep. I went back to bed expecting her to wake up and cry, but she never did. She slept for her three-hour stretch, then woke up at 2:30 wanting to eat, and again fell asleep and didn't awake when I put her in the crib.

Just as on previous nights, she then woke up two hours later at 4:30. After this feeding is when she usually starts to get difficult, waking up every hour or so until morning. As expected, I heard her wake up around 6:00, but I decided to wait and see if her fussing would ramp up before going to get her. I listened to her whine a little for about 10 minutes, and then she got quiet again. She had put herself back to sleep! Not only that, but she slept until about 7:30, a grand total of a three-hour stretch.

I'm much more rested this morning because we didn't have to wait out a long period of crying each time I put her back to bed. Also, I have been having such a hard time falling asleep because I've been waiting for her to wake up any minute. Last night I made an effort to relax my muscles and breathe deeply so I wasn't going to sleep tense. Plus, I turned down the baby monitor to the minimum volume so I could hear her crying but couldn't hear all the other stuff — the white noise machine, the bumping as she moves around, the whimpering and all the other stuff that seems like an indication she's about to wake up.

Knowing she's sleeping at regular intervals helps too; I'm not waiting for her to wake up any minute because I'm more confident that she's going to stay asleep for awhile.

All in all, life is starting to seem good again. In addition to all of this, I'm starting to try to stretch feedings out a tad longer to get her out of the habit of eating every two hours like clockwork, which I've read three-month-olds don't need to do as much anymore.

Naptimes aren't falling into place as easily today; she's been fussing a lot when she goes down, even though she seems really tired. I'm thinking about making an appointment with Three Day Blinds to try to get the room a little darker during the day.

Rough Patch (zzzzzzz)

Once again, long post warning — catharsis for a mom who's had it rough lately.

We've hit some rocky terrain with Maddie's sleep the past few weeks. Though, as I'm writing this it's 10:30 a.m. and I'm feeling as happy and optimistic about the way things are headed as I have in days. Even though I only got a handful of hours of sleep again last night, things are looking up.

A few weeks ago, we began noticing that Madeleine's sleep patterns were changing drastically. It began with her sleeping for much shorter stretches during the day — a half hour here, 20 minutes there, nothing like the long naps she used to take during her first several weeks of life. But it also seemed like she wasn't necessarily making up for those hours at night. Gone were the nights of four-hour and three-hour spans of sleep.

We knew her sleep was expected to change, with her staying awake longer during the day, so we probably wouldn't have thought much about it if it hadn't coincided with a bout of extreme fussiness. She started it about a week before Christmas, but during the holiday she was lovely and happy so we chalked it up to yet another growth spurt (especially after learning how fast she was growing during our pediatrician appointment). But just after Christmas it started up again, with a vengeance. It seemed like she was crying all the time: before she ate, after she ate, in the car, in the stroller, on the changing table (the biggest shocker of all).

Some of this was also going hand in hand with our attempts to wean Maddie off the Papasan swing, knowing that sooner or later she was going to need to sleep in a bassinet or crib (when she goes to day care). The nights we tried to have her sleep in the bassinet, she would maybe sleep for 30 minutes at a time, an hour if we were lucky. We kept thinking she'd finally be exhausted and crash, but it never happened.

The most frustrating thing was that getting her to sleep was no longer easy. Not that it ever has been easy, but the old tricks weren't working for us anymore. The bouncing, the rocking, the shooshing starting taking longer and longer, and Madeleine visibly fought all our efforts. She strained against our arms, arched her back and screamed. Her eyes were wide open. It was obvious that she was exhausted, but she simply refused to go to sleep. Every time we tried to put her down it was taking a long time, sometimes up to an hour, and then she was only sleeping for such short periods that it didn't even seem worth it. One night I actually said to Andrew: "She has to eat again in 45 minutes, so don't bother. She might as well just stay awake."

That, it turned out, was the problem. Somewhere along the way Maddie's (and probably her parents') active life starting catching up with her. When I finally called Dr. G., the pediatrician, she told me that most likely Maddie was over-tired, and running on adrenaline, which is why she was cranky but also why she refused to sleep.

Dr. G. informed me that at this age, babies need to go down for naps every two hours, preferably in a dark, quiet place with no artificial soothing (i.e., that damned Papasan with its evil addictive properties). We need to watch for Maddie's tired signs and try to head her off at the pass before she gets cranky, Dr. G. told me, but mostly we need to structure her sleep so she's not just nodding off whenever she feels like it (which lately, has been never) and is going down for naps at regular intervals.

Then the doctor asked: "Is she putting herself to sleep yet?" This is a conversation we've had with Dr. G. the past two times we've been to the pediatrician, that eventually we're going to need to "train" Maddie to fall asleep in the bassinet or crib on her own. I had assumed that was a long way out and that our daughter was way too young for sleep training, but Dr. G. told me we needed to get started now. "It's going to involve crying, I won't lie to you," she said. "Take three days and just get ready to hunker down and get through it."

Andrew and I discussed that and decided to wait until Martin Luther King Jr. weekend to try it. In the meantime, I started keeping a journal of Maddie's sleep schedule, and we started putting her down for regular naps. Sort of. The resisting sleep problem continued, to the point where we were frazzled and exhausted from fighting with her all day and night. Friday morning I was at the end of my rope, and lunged at Andrew in the bathroom like a raving lunatic. "I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE," I bellowed. Andrew, wisely, packed his bag and slinked off to work.

But Friday night he took his turn to let me get some sleep, and he came back to bed agreeing that something needed to be done. We were trying to quit the swing and solely use the bassinet per the doctor's recommendations, but we'd spend an hour bouncing her and shooshing her (while she screamed bloody murder), until finally she'd drop to sleep from exhaustion; then, as soon as we'd put her down in the bassinet, she'd wake up and start howling. Even the swing didn't work all of the time.

I did start noticing that the regular naps were starting to work though. During the times she was awake, between naps, she was wide-eyed and content. No more crying in the car seat. Happy on walks. Able to stay awake and civil through meals out. But when she got tired, she became miserable. And we weren't able to get her to sleep to help her out.

Finally, Saturday night, as I was in the glider rocking my screaming baby, I looked down and saw her red eyes and her beaten down face, and my heart broke, and I felt a new sense of purpose. I took her upstairs to the bedroom and said, "I'm making an executive decision. Tonight, Maddie sleeps in the swing, and we all get some sleep. Then tomorrow, we start sleep training." That night Maddie slept like a dream, and so did we. Sunday morning, I woke up and started reading the book I had purchased on Saturday afternoon, Sleeping through the Night, a recommendation from our pediatrician which details the exact procedure for sleep training that Dr. G. had laid out for me.

All day yesterday we began the preparations. We decided, upon some discussion, that we'd rather begin sleep training in her crib, in her own room, so we didn't have to make an additional transition later on. So we finally cleaned up Maddie's nursery, which had been overrun by gift boxes and miscellaneous baby things we hadn't put away yet. We washed her crib bedding and adjusted her mattress. In the guest room, we put clean sheets on the bed and hung curtains so we could move downstairs. We put up the mobile, put batteries in the Fisher Price aquarium, hooked up the monitor and the white noise machine. Most importantly, we let Maddie hang out in her crib for awhile as we played with her and let her mobile twirl, trying to create a positive association with the new place.

We began bedtime routine at 7:30: bath, story by dad, nursing and lullabye by mom. When we finally laid Maddie down in her crib, she was absolutely beautific, beaming up at both of us so sweetly that I felt deeply guilty. I turned on her aquarium and she stared at it as we left the room. On the monitor we didn't hear a sound; she was watching her fish turn and listening to the music play. But as soon as the aquarium stopped, she started crying. And crying. And crying. After 5 minutes we heard a loud noise and rushed in to the room. Maddie had spit up, not just a little but a lot, so the sheets, mattress pad and sleep sack were all soaked. Then, she pooped, creating a big spot on her pajamas.

This waylaid us a little — I had been nervous that something unforeseen like this would happen — but we took the book's advice and treated it matter-of-factly. I swooped her up and took her upstairs to change her while Andrew took the wet bedclothes to the dryer. I held her until the sheets were dry, and then we started over. Song, rocking, bed. This time, she fell almost immediately asleep, and Andrew and I celebrated with some leftover birthday cake.

She woke up an hour later, and that's when the night really began. I nursed her and put her back down, and then she started to cry. But the crying only lasted about 15 minutes. Every time I went in to soothe her, per the book's recommendations, she smiled at me sleepily, and I could tell she was getting tired. Finally, she got quiet and fell asleep. And slept for three hours. She woke up to eat every two hours after that, and cried a little each time. But it was productive crying. She always went to sleep shortly after crying for awhile, and Andrew and I weren't killing ourselves (and each other) fighting with her. By this morning I woke up very happy. We are on our way to a better-rested baby, and a happier and less frustrating life with our daughter.

Andrew and I agreed that if it didn't involve fighting to soothe her to sleep, I would continue to use the swing for naptimes at least temporarily (the book recommends starting training at bedtime and moving on from there). This morning at 8:30 Maddie fell asleep nursing, and I put her in her swing. She's been there now for two hours, fast asleep, the longest morning nap she's had in ages. I am a happy, happy mama.

For all of you brand new or about-to-be parents reading this: buy sleep books and start thinking about this now. You might end up with an easy kid who sleeps well, but you very well might end up with a Maddie. And nobody really told us to anticipate this! Andrew and I felt a little broadsided by it. We definitely think it should have been included in the instruction manual when we brought home this new little creature of ours.