At five months old, Jax was sleeping through the night. Then we went to Kentucky and Indiana for three weeks, and he hasn't done it since. Every so often, he will sleep seven hours straight. But most nights, he's waking up three or many more times.
And the only way he wants to go back to sleep, is to nurse.
I love nursing him. I'd like to get more sleep. I'd like him to get more sleep. I'd prefer to nurse more during the day and less during the night.
He's old enough that he doesn't "need" the night time calories. Except for the fact he is too busy and distracted to be taking enough in during the day. So he makes up for it at night.
I'm ready for solutions.
When he was three months old, or so, I read a few books on infant sleep. The one that was helpful was The No-Cry Sleep Solution. It was trying the various things she suggests that even got us to sleeping through the night back then. (And my mom's recommendation to move Jax to his own room. That worked almost like magic).
So I pulled the book back out (on Kindle. in my iPhone), and did some re-reading. It clarified for me two things:
He only knows how to fall asleep (in the night) by nursing.
During the day he will also fall asleep in the baby carrier, being bounced in your arms while you bounce on a yoga ball, and in the car. But during the night, he wants to nurse back down to sleep. It's all I've done, so it's all he knows. If Benjamin goes into his room instead of me, he has a royal meltdown. For twenty or thirty minutes. Even if Benjamin manages to get him to fall asleep, he wakes and screams again until I go in to nurse him.
So he doesn't know how to put himself back to sleep. And he doesn't know how to fall asleep except by sucking. (And he refuses a pacifier, and always has). If he wakes, he doesn't go back to sleep. He cries, and needs me to nurse him.
Secondly, he's taking in too much of his calories during the night, because he (and I!) get busy and distracted during the day, and too many hours pass before one of us remembers Jax is hungry.
So my two efforts are to help him learn to fall asleep in other ways than nursing, and to work really hard to get him to take plenty of solid food and breast milk during the day, so he can do without night nursing.
And the third effort is to pray over him each night before bed, to rest peacefully, surrounded by angels and the presence of the Lord. For the Lord to give him peaceful, long rest, so he can learn to sleep through the night. I pray over him every night, but haven't been daily praying for his peaceful, long rest. I have before, but haven't lately. Time to add that back in.
My goal at this point, is for him to sleep from bedtime (bath and nighttime routine starts at 7pm, asleep by 8pm), to 3am or 4am (seven to eight hours). At that point, I'm happy to bring him into bed with us (Benjamin leaves for work at 4:45 am), and let him sleep with us and nurse off and on until morning.
After implementing a few suggestions from the book, we've made some improvement.
If he wakes up within two hours of bedtime, I can get him back to sleep in my arms without nursing. I can even set him down in his crib after just soothing him a bit in my arms, and stroke his back till he falls asleep.
His 11pm/12am waking, I have shortened his nursing time down from 20-30 minutes, to about 5-10 minutes. I'm going to keep shortening it until hopefully he doesn't wake up for it.
Once he comes into bed with us around 4am, he's only waking to nurse every hour or less, and we're sleeping to about 7 or 7:30am (shortened from 8:30am, which is actually a good thing, because 7-8:30 he was fussy and nursing every ten minutes but not ready to wake up but not really sleeping but falling back asleep but waking back up ten minutes later which was so annoying).
I'm not a totally no-cry person, and have let him cry ten or twenty minutes, or as long as thirty minutes a couple times, when I felt completely out of options to do anything else. However, crying is not my first choice, and leaving him to cry-it-out is something I dread. I'll do it, I guess, if I can't find any other way. But not until after trying a lot of other ways.
Sometime this year, we'd like to conceive baby number two. But right now, the idea of being pregnant, which messes up your sleep, or having a newborn, which totally destroys your sleep, sounds terrible. Because I've already got one kid on his own sleep schedule that is messing with mine. And I need to get him sleeping better and longer before I'm willing to sign up for a whole new round of sleep deprivation. So I'm motivated to work with him and hoping we can make sleep progress using no-cry or minimal-cry solutions.
Oh, and we wore gold yesterday. I love this color shirt for Jax, but wasn't sure how to pair it with an outfit for me. Then Benjamin gave me these tights in my Christmas stocking. Good eye, husband!
And Jax's cowboy boots. Oh. My. Heart. I'm not really a fan of country stuff. Music, apparel, etc. I never would have bought cowboy boots for my son. But my mother-in-law bought them from Cracker Barrel and now I will never be the same. They are ridiculously adorable on him. I'll have to get some photos that show them off a bit more, but you get the idea.
It's been raining for days, which we need SO SO badly. It gave me an excuse to wear rain boots without everyone looking at my feet with longing, wishful hope. (They're pining for rain, not my boots). (Thought I should clarify). Some days, fashion is practical. Not just fashionable.
Here's to hoping better sleep will come soon, paired with more rain.
