All About Sleep

I keep meaning to come up with a new title and caption for my blog, but alas...these kiddos have sucked the creativity out of me. Everything I come up with is just sub-par. "Two and Through." Blah. I can't even come up with another failure.

Probably the most useful piece of information I have ever received was that "the more they sleep during the day, the more they sleep at night." We learned that from someone in the pediatrician's office a few months in with Liam, and I think that was one of the turning points of our lives. Prior to, we used to say "we must keep him up all day so he'll be tired enough to sleep through the night!" Then we wondered why he was inconsolable.

With Macy, we've pretty much kept her asleep about 18-20 hours a day since she was born. She sleeps most of the day, and then she goes down around 7 at night and sleeps till 7 in the morning (granted, it's interrupted by a couple feedings, but they're getting fewer and further between). Don't get me wrong - I would LOVE to hang out with her and have some awake interactive time. She just gets so darn cranky after her basic needs have been met, and it's clear that she's ready to go back to sleep. You KNOW it's just completely over when she starts crying, wiggling, and grunting, and the eyes glaze over and get all red-brimmed.

This was my entire day on Tuesday. My ENTIRE day. She woke up at 5:30am, and I could just tell that she wasn't ready to be awake. I gave her a bottle and tried to rock her back to sleep, but she wouldn't, or couldn't, sleep. I continued trying for several hours, and finally she went to sleep lying down on me. She probably would have stayed asleep, but I had to pee, and her slumber didn't survive the transfer to the infant rocker. My day continued like this, with spurts of about 5 to 15 minutes of sleep here and there, but nothing long enough to restore either my sanity or hers.

You know the poor thing was just as frustrated as I was.

Finally 7pm rolled around, and I thought SURELY her big 6 oz. nighttime bottle and some rocking would put her to sleep, but not so much. I could just feel my insides boiling from the stress of the day, so I put her down, walked down the hall to our bathroom where Andy was giving Liam a bath, and let it all out. I was like "I can't take this anymore! I've been doing this for 14 hours!! FOURTEEN HOURS!!!..." My nerves were just so absolutely frayed.

I looked down at poor Liam, who was sitting there covered in bubbles with his mouth hanging open. As Andy left to take care of Macy and relieve me, I took a deep breath and pulled myself together for Liam's sake. Too little too late, I guess, because he looks at me with the most concerned expression on his face, shakes his head, and says "mommy doesn't like baby sister anymore."

Oops. Definite parenting fail moment. On one hand, I wanted to laugh because it was really hilarious to me. On the other, I was just so sad because I was reminded of how black and white this world is to a kid his age. I had a very long discussion with him about how much I love his baby sister and that, just because I was frustrated, it didn't mean I didn't like her anymore.

You live and you learn. That's what parenting is all about...screwing up and vowing never to repeat your screw-up again...and then inevitably repeating it sometime soon after :)

Fortunately, Macy has been an absolute doll since then. I am sure we'll have those days here and there, but she's becoming a better baby every day. She's able to stay awake and content for longer periods of time, so I get to enjoy her some.

In other news, the hell that has become Liam's bedtime seems to be looking up, thanks to Supernanny.com. I had been saying that we need to put our foot (feet?) down and get him back to the point where he can go to sleep all by himself for the sake of those nights when I am trying to get them both down by myself. I had Googled the issue of him needing us in the middle of the night as well, and I came to the conclusion that there is no way that we can expect him to put himself back to sleep in the middle of the night as long as he requires us to be there until he goes to sleep initially.

Supernanny says to do the following steps:

1) The first time the child gets out of bed, go back and cuddle for another 2 minutes or so.
2) The second time the child gets out of bed, go back in, put him or her back in bed, and sternly remind the child that it's time for bed.
3) Each subsequent time the child gets out of bed, put him or her back in bed without any conversation and without making eye contact.

It's been working like a charm, and tonight was wonderful - we didn't make it past Step 1. Prior to reading Supernanny's solution, I'd been doing the 2nd step over and over and over every night, but it had become a game to him. He knew he could count on getting some additional attention every time he got out of bed, and there was no incentive to stop. When we fail to acknowledge his antics, he gets bored of it pretty quickly. Knock on wood, but it seems that he has caught on that he gets no benefit out of carrying out this process beyond Step 2.

The addition of a second child really threw him and his bedtime routine for a loop. Perhaps our sanity is in the process of being restored. Thank goodness!