Ask any parent of an under-one-year-old what the most controversial baby-raising topic is, and chances are they will respond "sleeping through the night!" There are dozens of books, hundreds of blogs and thousands of online articles on the topic. At what age "should" your child be sleeping through the night? How about nightweaning? How much crying is acceptable? What methods are the best for "sleep training"? On and on it goes, and it gets surprisingly polarized and emotional, as the proponents of one technique claim that the proponents of another technique are emotionally damaging their children, and the fans of the second technique explain how (and why) it works for them, and both camps turn to scientific research, who says "uh, I dunno, we haven't really studied the effect of x on y over z period of time."
So every family is pretty much fending for itself in the best way it knows how. The thing is, that "best way" is different from family to family, and often from child to child.
Of course I continue to read everything I can get my hands on, which is both good and bad. For a long time we relied on the advice given at the Troublesome Tots blog. This blog was very useful in helping us figure out how long we should be aiming to keep Edward up between naps. Once we adopted its suggestions, we found Ed generally much more willing to take his naps. We'll probably continue to look at this blog for nap timing advice as he gets older.
Naps - more or less sorted, then. At least, I haven't heard too many complaints from either daytime party about them, and Ed gives pretty clear signals when he's ready, most of the time. But nights? Nights are still a work in progress. Most - not all - of my reading suggests that by the time a baby is around 4-6 months old he is capable of sleeping through the night, and most - not all - of my reading suggests that at eight months old most babies are capable of going the whole night without eating. But that second item, and the related topic of night weaning, is something for another blog post.
We've been looking at improving Ed's night sleep. Typically, he goes to sleep between 7 and 9 PM (roughly) and sleeps for eleven hours, but will have anywhere from two wakeups (rarely) to four or five. He'll usually sleep for two or three hours after going down, and then wake a few more times, usually 1.5 or 2 hours apart. On the up side, he goes back to sleep easily after we take care of his pottying or his feeding or whatever else it was that he wanted. Or at least, he did until last night.
You see, last night we compiled the information from our pediatrician ("He needs to learn to sleep through the night. He doesn't need to be fed so often at night; he's gaining well.") and the information from the Troublesome Tots page (we fit neither in category one nor category two, by the way) and attempted to "sleep train" Edward using a method called "Cry It Out" (CIO), but a modified version that includes periodic visits by a parent. He'd been up for a long time after a short nap and was showing signs of being tired. We changed him. We nursed him. He fell asleep nursing, as he almost always does. I gently woke him up again just enough to let him fall asleep on his own in his crib. He rolled onto his side...then onto his front (his preferred sleeping position), then pushed up on his hands and knees.
Then the crying began.
As directed by the sleep training, we let him cry, going in briefly at periodic (and lengthening) intervals to reassure him that yes, we are still here, but it's sleeping time now. It got harder and harder, for all of us. Eventually, after my worst hour since the birth (and probably his, too) we gave up and brought him downstairs. His little tearstained, snotstained face calmed down almost as soon as he was with us, and he spent the next two hours playing fairly happily with us, the cats, and on his own...though he was clearly tired, and for a little while his head wobbled around while he desperately fought sleep while playing. He also spent the two hours doing more spitups than I've seen for a while; surely the aftereffects of a stressful experience.
When we put him down the second time, at 9, things were very different. He pottied, got into his pajamas and two sleep sacks (one with arms, one without; we call it double-bagging), nursed, had his storybook, then had a second sitting-up feed while I watched his face get drowsier. I stopped nursing him before he was fully asleep, burped him, and put him into bed with his eyes open. He rolled over and passed out.
He slept until 2:30 AM.
Was it the putting down awake? The extra warmth of the second bag? The second feed? Sheer exhaustion? I don’t know, but we’re hoping to replicate it WITHOUT the CIO.
It's worth noting that, at 2:30 AM, after he had been changed and fed, he cried when I tried to put him back in the crib. He has never resisted going back to sleep before. I think he was scared we would leave him alone again. Frankly, I don’t think I have the heart to try CIO again, at least not until he is old enough to understand a little more of what we are saying to him. He fell asleep by 3 and cried out once at 3:30 but either didn’t wake or put himself back to sleep again. He woke again around 5 for more feeding; that time I fell asleep with him till I had to get up at 6:30. He was still sleeping at 7:30 when I left. Today I have turned to my fallback: research. I dimly remembered reading something months ago, before he was born, about babies who simply do not "cry themselves out". After a series of google searches, I found what I was looking for. Ed is a "Tension Increaser".
Yes, you, cheeky monkey. Shhh...
"Tension increaser" and "tension decreaser" appear to be names created by a blogger at AskMoxie.org based on her experiences with her own children. They refer to opposite ends of a theoretical spectrum of behavioral responses to stress, in this case in infants, but adults can be increasers and decreasers too. A tension increaser infant will not respond well to being left to cry in his crib. He will get more and more stressed out until his caregiver returns to comfort him. A tension decreaser, on the other hand, needs to "get it out of his system" before he can settle down and relax. They were pretty much made to thrive on the standard idea of "Cry it out" sleep training. You might recognise tension increasers and decreasers in your own social circles: the increasers keep their stresses to themselves and may need help coping with "too big" emotions - they have trouble dealing with them all on their own. The decreasers "flare up" and need to vent their frustrations. Once vented, they're pretty happy again in short order.
So, practically, what does this mean?
- 'Crying it out' is not a valid option for us at this stage.
- Ed needs some extra reassurance at bedtime. When we do it right, he is capable of sleeping 4 to 5.5 hours without needing anything from us.
- When he does need something, it is often to use the potty. We have trained him to hold his bladder and alert us when he needs to potty. We can hardly blame him for doing exactly that in the middle of the night. Slowly, as he drinks less at night, this problem will take care of itself. Now is not the time for nightweaning, and that's okay.
So it's not ideal. Our sleep continues to be broken. We can deal with it. As mentioned by some of the authors I've read, this stage is short in the overall time span of parenting. All kids eventually sleep through the night. Very few high school students continue to wake up every two hours all night, after all. And when you look at this face:
...how can you not do whatever is necessary to help him learn how to be a little boy, and, if he needs a gentle touch, provide that too?
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