Sean and I have adopted a take-no-prisoners approach to Axel's capricious sleep/no sleep days and nights. We are presenting a united front. It's Mama and Daddy against the cranky, sleep baby who needs, but doesn't want, sleep.
We're fighting for the enemy's heart and mind, as they say, so the weapons in our arsenal must be of the more subtle kind. You can't threaten a baby to sleep, or poke him with needles until he gives in and snoozes. Believe me, I've tried - not the needles, though lord knows that, in moments that were not my best, filled with the sort of desperation that fuels the sales of sleep solution books, I can't say that I wouldn't have tried a little pin pricking if a self-appointed expert told me that jabbing a baby with needles is a sure bet for making him sleep through the night - but the commands.
"Go to sleep now," I've said, playing the mommy dictator of the land of slumber. "You have to sleep. Not sleeping is not an option. You better sleep or you'll regret it tomorrow." Axel knows these are empty threats. I'm the one who's going to regret it the next day if he doesn't sleep. And what am I going to do if he doesn't? Punish him by making him stay awake longer? You can't punish a four month old. Four month olds don't misbehave - I mean, sometimes Axel sticks his thumb in his nose when he's going for his mouth. Clearly we do not have a criminal mastermind on our hands. We can't lock him up and bully him in to dreamland. Sleep cannot be forced.
War is too strong of a word for what we're doing, even though it sure feels like a battle to me at 3 am. It's more like sleep wooing. Axel was, after all, the size of a pea a year ago. He's grown 24 inches in a year. Teenagers turn into huge jerks when they're only sprouting up four inches in a year. It makes sense to me that such rapid development would make some babies (including our mostly sweet boy) a little nutty, and I'm fine babying my boy since he is, after all, just a baby. Given his transformation from a legume to a wee person, the strategy that seems best for us is to take a gradual (but steady) approach to encouraging longer naps and larger chunks of sleep at night, easing him along the developmental path. My goal is just to get him back to the very manageable once-per-night feeding.
Since it's futile to even attempt to command our baby to sleep, our approach is to butter him up and wear him down. We're seducing him with lullabies and rocking. We're chipping away at his sleep-refusing willpower by exposing him to sunlight early in the day, getting outside a few times, and engaging in lots of active play. We're encouraging three regular daily naps even if it sometimes takes twenty minutes of rocking and patting and patiently waiting out the fussies to get him to stay down, or if he only wants to nap in the sling. I made Sean hang bath towels over the drapes in an effort to further darken the room, and we're faithfully running the humidifier for white noise. We're sticking with our nightly Four B routine - bath, baby massage, books, breastfeeding - to ease him into sleep. I've also finally figured out how to nurse lying down, so I can rest while the boy eats and feel less like a groggy zombie the next day (yeah, I know - it seems pretty straightforward but I still couldn't make it work until recently). We've already seen some benefits, though I'm honestly not sure if it's just a fluke or if it's because of our sleep strategies. Axel was back to waking up just once to eat on Friday night, though on Saturday he was up twice. Twice is still a huge improvement on some of the nights we've had lately. I'll take any progress we can get, even if it sometimes feels like it's at a tranquilized turtle's pace.
And, if all else fails, we'll just wait it out. Maybe he's teething - he has been drenching his shirts with drool and gnawing on his knuckles. Maybe it's a growth spurt. We're patient. It's probably just a phase - even if, in the wee hours of the morning, it feels like a long one.
Let the great sleep battle wooing of 2008 begin!
