Ha. We brought all 4 lbs 9 ounces of Barrett home from the hospital when he was 4 days old. Per the hospital’s instructions, we kept him snuggly swaddled with his glow worm contraption to calm his coloring. Not having read more than a few sentences on sleep while Snowball was in utero, we immediately went into survival mode of sorts. After the “last” feeding of the day, we headed up to Barrett’s great green room and placed our little preemiein his {what seemed at the time to be} massive crib. He cried. We picked him up and rocked {read: swayed, danced, moved and grooved} him to sleep. We placed him in the crib and left the room. We then tucked ourselves into beddy-by and per the peds instructions, I set the alarm to wake me in 1.5 hours {2 hours from B’s last trip to the boobfet} and snuggled in for sweet slumber. The first night, the alarm was unnecessary. Barrett woke us several times with his squeaky squawk and by the time the sun came up the next morning, I had been through 5 feedings and Adam was laid out on the floor next to Barrett in the boppy {yes, I know. This is highly frowned upon by the medical community}.
Two of the longest-nights-of-my-life later, and two days of analyzing sleeping {could we make it darker? should we add a fan? should we swaddle tighter?} Barrett slept in his crib and the alarm came into play. That whole “never wake a sleeping baby” is true unless your baby weighs less than a two-person Thanksgiving turkey. Every two hours, my cell phone alarm would play Tone 1 {a sound which makes me cringe to this day} and I would sleepily stumble into his room, snag him up from his sleep and settle in for a forty minute feeding frenzy {Okay, perhaps not quite frenzy-ish as it often included a diaper change to wake his weary head}. Following each feeding, I would patiently whisper {ahem} Adam’s name into the monitor and he would trudge up the stairs and sub in as my relief pitcher {sans milkbar, of course}. As I headed out the door to set myself up for a 20 minute pumping period {pretty sure the pump saw more action the first 4 months than Adam did}, Adam took over the rocking, rolling, shushing and swaying that it took to send Barrett back to sleepytown. Following this ridiculous regimen, Adam and I would meet back up at the mattress and get some shuteye for the last part of the two hour routine. Life was a blur.
We hadn’t really discussed what we would or wouldn’t do regarding sleep but I am certain that neither of us newbies thought we would be double swaddling our Babe, that we’d spend 30 minutes rocking and rolling to get him to dreamland or that we’d actually wake him up to feed him.
Three weeks in, B started on meds {Zantac to Prilosec to Prevacid} for acid reflux, and at this point, we found out that in order to help him gain, not gag, he needed to be held upright for 20 minutes post each feeding. This, of course, prolonged each night feeding and made me a ridiculous mess. With weekly weigh-ins with dear Dr. Dek, we found ourselves overwhelmingly obsessed with each ounce and went through the days in a daze. I felt as if I’d been defriended by sleep and that there was nothing I could do to repair our once chummy friendship. I decided at that point that I would never tell another mom that “it will get better” or “see the forest through the trees” … because, honestly, it is happy, cheery advice like that which makes a new mom feel like she should just take the baby back to the baby store. In fact, I believe that as long as they’re revamping health care, the revised plan should include a night nanny for every new mom and dad and a trip to a quiet, spa-like scene once a month.
I suppose it was finally around 4 months … about the point in which Barrett’s daytime screaming sessions ceased … when the nights felt more normal. At 7 months, we finally ditched the full swaddle {something we swear we’ll wean off of earlier on the next one}, and we began the dreaded cry-it-out (CIO) routine. I know… there are many different camps when it comes to CIO but I had visions of a 15 year old boy who needed to be rocked to sleep {I know, a bit dramatic} and decided we should give it a run. Adam and I made an action plan and prepared ourselves to be emotionally and physically exhausted. We decided to try out cry out on a Friday and readied ourselves for hours of fits and screaming. That night, following Barrett’s normal routine {book, squeezers, book, bed} we sang one song and set him in his crib. We walked out of his room… prepared for the worst. By the time we got downstairs and turned on the monitor, Barrett was out. Down for the count. Off to dreamland… and fantastically enough it ended up being nothing to lose sleep over.
While nighty night sleep is stressful, nap time is down right hideous. All in all, sleep has been crappy enough to rethink timing and/or even the thought of procreating any further. I think the part of this sleep business that scares me the most is that each subsequent child will be drastically different when it comes to such things. So, before I enter into any agreement to make additional children, I think we’ll have to sleep on it…
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