Updating the Sleep Situation

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! We're sleeping. Mostly. And I didn't want to disturb the equilibrium by talking about it. So I've been a bit quiet on the issue lately.

Nevertheless, it seems to be working.

After my last post about the sleep monster, I did manage to get to talk to Tracey. Can I say again how phenomenal she is? She is phenomenal! In the middle of her own crisis, she called me back and made sure we were okay. Helped us tweak what we were doing and brought us to the other side of the problem.

So, it turns out that we were shushing him too much. Crap, I didn't realize there was a "too much" to that. This is why we need Tracey. It seems that Liam has taken the shushing for talking to him and has chosen to argue back. Thus the screaming at us for 3 nights running. Boy do I feel silly. I wish we'd just called her to begin with, instead of thinking we could wait him out. There is no waiting this child out, it appears. So we cut the shushing down. I laugh a little when I think about Tracey's "about every 16 minutes", because 16 is such an odd number. But it made the point. We shush infrequently now. He knows we are here. Now get over it and sleep, buddy boy.

Also, after the couple of times Liam threw up in the beginning, Ray was nervous about him causing himself to throw up again. So he would go in and check on him. He was also giving Liam back his soother when he threw it. You know this goes nowhere good right? Ray had the best of intentions. Now we go in for nothing.

And we have slept through the night for two nights.

But he's a wily little man, my Liam. Instead of giving it to us in the middle of the night, he's now trying both ends of the night. Two nights running he sang, yelled, threw his soother, and generally made a nuisance of himself for 2-3 hours before he would go to sleep. To no avail. Seriously, child? Do you not know that if Mommy and Daddy have it together enough to ignore your efforts to disrupt sleep at 2 am, that certainly your shenanigans at 8 or 9 pm will not move us. We are on to your game, wee man. Best to give it up.

We waited through the two nights. I am not going to say it is over, because I have a feeling with this child it will never be completely over, but it was under an hour tonight.

And then there are mornings. The first night he slept through the night, he woke up at 6:30 am. Now, I am not very happy about 6:30, because I have a personal preference for 7-7:30. We have Xander trained to a 7 am wake up. (My actual internal clock likes 8 am, but 7 will do.) So I did not greet 6:30 am with enthusiasm, but felt I should give the kid a break, because he did sleep through the night. And what would making him fuss or cry or scream in his crib for 30 minutes accomplish anyway?

Yeah, I was about as wrong as a human being can be. This morning we were greeted with a 5:50 am wake up as a result of our lack of insisting he stay in bed until 7 am. And if I was enthused about 6:30 am, you can imagine the joy in me at ten to six. Yeah, not so much. So this morning we bit the bullet and let him cry about it.

Liam's developed a couple of interesting tactics to make us come to him. First there is the soother tossing, which boggles my mind, because I know he loves his soother and really, wouldn't that be like having a whole chocolate cake in your hands and then deciding you were mad at someone and throwing that cake on the ground? Who loses? Not the person you were mad at, for sure. YOU. Liam will eventually figure that out...or be broken of his soother habit. Either way, Mommy and Daddy will win that little battle too. Hopefully he gets that memo soon! The whole soother tossing phenomenon aside, there is also the yelling at the top of his lungs and now he is actually making himself cough and cough to try to get us to go in and check on him. Smart, no? I've actually watched him turn it on and off. Truly an act that should be given an Emmy.

It almost makes me wonder what will be next.

He'll get it. Especially since we are getting better rest than we used to and can wait this out a bit.

Sleep Just Seems to be the Evasive Monster

We hired The Sleep Doula a couple of weeks ago. She was fantastic and got us through the worst of setting ourselves up for new habits. And she basically talked us through the three nights that followed.

We are being consistent. Painfully so. To the point where Ray has now slept two nights in the hall. Out of over 10 days, or rather, nights of effort, we have had 2 where Liam slept through and one where he wasn't bad and the wake up was less than an hour. Granted, this is better than being up for 4 hours each night, but still really, really exhausting. Really!

We had the initial 3 nights, a night of sleep, then three nights of fussing. I talked to Tracey and she thought that was a burst, which is a period of time where the sleeper regresses. So when after three nights of fussing he slept the night, I thought to myself "Hooray!!! We've whipped the sleep monster into shape." This is working.

Yeah, um, not so much. It has now been followed by THREE nights of Liam screaming at us. Xander has slept two of those nights in our bed and Ray is on the air mattress in the hall. So while I want to say that this is the burst, I have questions. How long should a burst last? If we are on three nights of this how much longer should we expect it to go? And what the hell was the three nights of complaining then?

I know there are more questions, but I am just too tired to think about it.

The big thing is that this follows our previous patterns. Only this would be about the time I would throw up my hands and try something else. Only I've tried it all, so what alternatives do I have? So I will call Tracey and hope she either has comforting words or solutions.

Night and then Day

Last night was our fourth night after implementing the sleep reorg. I want to have some crafty way of denoting that, like after ovulation you write 6dpo and time before Christ is BC. I need that. Perhaps BSO and PSO (for before sleep org and post sleep org)? So we are 4PSO. And having thought of that, I do wonder if the newly found sleep is addling my brain. I am just not used to it!

Each night gets a bit better. Two nights ago Liam cried a bit, but was back to sleep in under 10 minutes, with Ray shushing on the hall side of the door. After 3 nights on the floor for me, it was his turn. Lucky guy still got to sleep in our bed that night. Now, that said, before anyone starts cursing out men or thinking my husband got off easy on this, be aware that when Liam was getting up at night, it was Ray who would get up with him for hours on end. I am all but useless for hours on end with no real purpose in the middle of the night. I could do the sleep reorg because I knew why and what I was doing. And also, Tracey kept me on the straight and narrow over instant messaging.

Last night there was nary a peep from the wee man. He woke at 7 am on the dot and let out a feeble "I'm here you know" cry. (Not to work on teaching him to say "I'm awake!" instead of doing the crying thing. Still, it's not the "someone is stabbing me with a hot fork" cry, so I will take even that change.)

We already feel much better around here. And the house is showing it. I cannot believe how far behind I am on everything though. Sleeplessness sucks. And it sucks everything out of a person.

This morning we woke up to rain. It's not cold, so the kids were dressed without their snowpants and Liam got a puddle suit over his boots, coat, mitts, and hat. He was so cute that I laughed and took a couple of pictures.


That's the first time I have said, "Okay smile!" and he did for me.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream...

Last night was our second night of reorganizing sleep for Liam. I want to use the typical term of "sleep training", but really I wonder who is being trained? Is it Liam being trained to stay in his bed? Are we being trained to not respond to his every whim? It's going to take me a while to puzzle that one out.

It is working though. The first night Liam and I were awake for 4 very long hours. Yesterday we were both a mess. Last night I hoped for a break through. I expected it to be a couple of hours though.

It wasn't.

He was awake a grand total of about 30 minutes. Split into two wakings, which occurred in under an hour. I woke up with him at 2:25 am and was sleeping soundly again before 3:10 am. I woke up just before 7 am for something for Xander, and Liam stayed asleep until just before 8 am. It feels like a tiny miracle.

My body feels like it belongs to a whole other person. I am still tired, but it is not the extreme tired and the mind fuzz that has infected our days and nights for ages. There is an edge of alertness to it. I am beginning to think about projects to do and places to go. I feel like I could be productive. And I am dreaming about the potential for my life once we are consistently sleeping through the night (and not on an air mattress in the tiny hallway outside his bedroom).

However, I am still nervously waiting for the other shoe to drop. It cannot possibly be this easy. Surely Liam will have one (or two) last stabs at this sleeplessness. Surely. But when? I have no idea which end of the spectrum to expect tonight.

Counting Chickens

I'm sitting here, counting my chickens before they are hatched. Really, it is more like counting what I am going to do with my renewed energy once Liam learns to sleep properly. For oh, that day is a-coming.

Last week I did a little blog on how to know if you are sleep deprived. It was during a moment of laugh before you cry madness and I was so tired from the previous night I am still amazed that I could access my blogging password in the fuzz that passes for my brain these days.

That was then. We are sleep training now. Liam will give it up and figure this out. (It being the insane night hours he keeps.) And I have a not-so-secret tactic up my sleeve: I've got a coach backing me up. The Sleep Doula is talking me through this via telephone, email and since I am so antiquated that I do not text, a chat client. Awesome! She's been telling me when we are making progress. It's been nice to have that confirmation, though I have so much more confidence after our chat the other day.

And there is progress. He's not just screaming endlessly at me. He goes in fits and spurts. Quiet, then more yelling. The yelling is less heated too. It's like he spends the quiet time trying to figure out if he ought to be yelling about this or give up and sleep. I think he will eventually give up and sleep.

It's a good thing that I don't do this as a profession though, because I would be 500 lbs in 6 months. I am tired and I would like to eat something. Lots of somethings, really.

Which brings me to my counting of chickens...when Liam sleeps, I am going to get myself nice and rested again (can it be? is it possible?) and I am going to start with some of the following:

1. Finally get back into running properly. I think that part of the reason I keep reinjuring myself when running is the lack of proper sleep. How can the body heal and rest if there is no real rest?
2. Eat properly. Yeah, see the comment about wanting to eat in the middle of the night. I do. And I probably will tonight, but when I am rested I can put the effort I want to put into eating properly.
3. With proper rest, I bet I can lose that last 15 lbs from having Liam. Then I have intentions of kicking a bit more weight to the curb. I know I can do this, but it is really hard to do it when you can't follow an exercise regime and you are just too tired to cook anymore. I read somewhere recently that sleeping even an hour or two less a night can impede weight loss efforts. I wanted to write back, "No kidding, huh. Which brainiac figured that one out?" I can barely manage (and am failing at it some weeks) to keep the laundry, dishes, and meals done, so exercise and proper eating...not so much.
4. Speaking of housework, boy do I look forward to not feeling overwhelmed by my tiny house. I want to give it a pat and tell it that it will feel better soon too.
5. Try to make business decisions and provide work quotes when you are propping your eyelids open with matchsticks. I dare you. I can't wait for that to get easier too.
6. I write and edit. The last few weeks have been brutal for sleep and worse for business. I can't wait for the fog to lift.

I have other, less lofty goals too, but for now I am just dreaming about them while talking to my 22 month old kid through the door. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...it's okay to go to sleep, little man. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.