Sleep Situation

While some of you may know Berkley's sleep situation, I'd guess that many of you do not. We thought at first that Berkley was following in her big sister's footsteps-- sleeping wonderfully at night. At 2-months of age, Berk was sleeping a 6-7 1/2 hour stretch overnight, which was amazing, especially for a breastfed baby. However, our luck changed right around 3-months.

Berkley started having really severe gas pains overnight causing her to wake FREQUENTLY. It was so rough not only because we had become accustomed to sleeping for much longer periods, but mainly because we wanted to help her and really couldn't do much. After repeated trips to Dr. McKenna in search of answers, we came up with a few possible solutions: 1) gulping in a lot of air when crying (even though we didn't allow her to cry for long periods whatsoever) due to separation anxiety, 2) an issue with my milk's quality, 3) the amount of milk I was producing perhaps wasn't meeting her demands (which came a little later) .

After a few weeks of ruling out these scenarios, we came to find that Berkley was in fact not getting enough milk. However, she continued to wake night after night even after we solved that problem. As she was approaching 8-months (yes, that's right, we dealt with gassy wakings day in and day out for 5 solid months), the gassiness ceased, but the wakings did not. We wondered if it had become a habit of being succored back to sleep and feeling comforted when she woke.

Let me take a step back to explain an aspect of my parenting that I've found differs LARGELY from many other parents' practices and advice. I've never been a proponent of the cry-it-out (CIO) method. Why, you might ask? Well, there are many reasons. First and foremost, I feel that as parents we need to feel comfortable, and the thought of letting any child of mine CIO brought (and still continues to bring) feelings of discomfort. Second, CIO simply doesn't coincide with my personal theory of children. I look at children like little adults, as human beings with real, valid feelings, needs, and desires. In other words, my children, and all children for that matter, are just like you and me. To better understand where I'm coming from, consider this: you are asleep and for some unknown reason you awaken to find yourself alone in the dark, perhaps even disoriented. You call out for your spouse, but he/she doesn't reply. You call again, wondering where they are or what they are doing. Still no response. You begin to feel uneasy, worried, scared, and VERY alone. You cry and continue to call, and still you hear nothing. I would want Chad to respond to me, and I know that he would never leave me to soothe myself back to sleep; therefore, I would never respond to my children in that way.

Well, with Berkley sleeping poorly we continued to pick her up to comfort and "parent" her back to sleep. After a few weeks with little to no success, we decided that we'd try keeping her in the crib and soothing her back to sleep by gentle pats, loving rubs, and quiet "shhh"s. A week into this attempt, we were frustrated that it wasn't working either. We were both tired, at our wits end, and our relationship was suffering. One of us (typically me) was constantly attending to Berkley overnight, which allowed little time for us. I reluctantly called our pediatrician's office and asked one of the nurses what to do. She informed me, as several had done with Chloe, that we should lay her down awake and let her cry, even if she cried until she threw up. What she said next shocks me even to this day: if she did vomit, they advised that we clean her up, clean the bed, and place her back in without any talking or consolation! To me, that sounded inhumane, and I refused to ever let it get to that point. However, we did decide to try CIO.

The first few nights were wonderful! Then we had several bad, a few good, a weeks worth of bad, a couple good, an ok, another good set of bads, one good, and then back to where we had started. This was when I started to truly lose my mind. Not only was this method not helping my sweet baby, I felt absolutely horrible letting her cry without attending her need for me. I know that many could say that she was "manipulating" me, but in my mind she was (and still does every time she cries) communicating a discomfort/fear/or otherwise negative feeling. Chad and I both disliked the feelings we experienced in letting her CIO, so we decided that without the success we were told we would receive that we would change our ways and not let her CIO again.

I can honestly say that we haven't let her cry it out again after those dreadful three weeks! A good friend lent me a copy of The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley, which was so helpful and reassuring. I always relish information that meshes well with my philosophies, and her ideas and research most definitely does. She explained that society often has this theory that babies should be sleeping through the night after 2 months. However, she describes that through her research that a mere 5 hour stretch is considered sleeping overnight, despite our preconceived notions. I first read the book and obtained so much comfort from it. We proceeded in our comfort zone and continued to go to Berk when she woke overnight. We've had a MUCH better couple of weeks, though each night is a little different. She's teething now, and it appears as if she's coming down with a cold, which has caused some setbacks. I decided to buy Pantley's book, and as soon as we overcome this cold and the tooth she is cutting, I plan to use her methods for helping Berkley to sleep longer overnight. I'll post an update on her sleeping again in a couple of weeks to explain more if/how her gentle methods have helped Berkley. Wish us luck!!

Over a year ago, Chad brought this interesting handout home from his Priesthood meeting at church titled Babies deserve humane care from parents. It was written by Valerie Hudson, a researcher at the BYU Family Studies Center. She affords the example of a teething 10-month-old (not far off from my own situation) who wakes numerous times at night and a mother who continually goes to comfort him. She explains that doing so has "taught him a profound lesson in humane behavior." She continues, saying, "How we treat our infants and toddlers is the foundation of their value system. It is a powerful act of communication about the most important matters of life." She adds that researchers have found that the way in which parents treat and respond to them allows children to "... form a conception of God. As you can imagine, children in the study believed God was like their parents, and that God's behavior and feelings toward themselves was fundamentally the same as their parents' behavior and feelings toward them."

What she says next is truly why I go to my kids when they wake in the night upset, afraid, or otherwise uncomfortable: "So, at 3:45 a.m., your 10-month old is learning about life, God, and about you. Can I trust my Mom or Dad to come when I am in pain, even though I have cried out many times already? Will God respond when I am in pain, even though I have called on him repeatedly? Or does loving response wear thin after a while?" I know that despite the number of times you call on Heavenly Father that He will respond, and that the Spirit will be there to comfort and guide you. As parents here on Earth, we are responsible for these sweet, tender little spirits who came to us from God to receive a body and a life here with our families. It is our duty to look after them as God looks after all of His children, with love, care, and compassion.

I hope that his post hasn't bored any of you; I figure if you lost interest it was a LONG time ago and you stopped reading anyway :-) I just felt the need to get out all of my feelings about our sleep situation with Berkley and explain how I parent a little differently than many people, including trusted doctors and family members alike. If I've learned anything from my education and becoming a parent, as a mother, father, grandparent, or caretaker of young children, you HAVE to feel comfortable with the manners in which you deal with those children in both positive and so-called negative situations. Take comfort, look to the Lord, and, one of the most important messages here, LOVE your children :-)