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• The Five Minute Sleep Solution

  The sleep solution - at least the current solution - is stomach sleeping.  Sleeping face down, with his arms splayed out and face smushed against the mattress, is apparently Axel's preferred sleep position.  Maybe for months he's been longing to be belly-down at night, and was thwarted by our committment to the anti-SIDS back to sleep approach.  I don't blame him - I like to sleep on my stomach, too, especially now that I'm not carrying six pounds of baby and twenty plus pounds of amniotic fluid and pudge in my belly.  Because I'm the sort to follow the doctor's recommendations precisely, especially when they have anything to do with death, we still put him to sleep on his back - it's just that he's figured out that he can immediately roll over, wiggle around for five minutes, and burrow down into his red crib sheet before passing out.  Though I've twisted his chin to the side when his nose is smashed down, I'm not so paranoid that I roll Axel back over to his back again and again.  If I started that, I'd be doing nothing but baby rolling all night long.  If he's able to do his rolly-poly nightly settling routine, he's also able to roll back, should he need to.      Let me back up and explain our other sleep-promoting steps over the past few weeks.  First, we moved Axel in to his own room.  I thought he would have moved from his spot in the Pack N Play next to our bed to his bedroom sooner, but his room wasn't quite finished.  See, we were insane enough to decide to renovate our kitchen, add on another bedroom and bathroom, and reconfigure the office (now nursery) starting when I was just over five months pregnant with Axel.  Things didn't go as planned, as they tend to when construction or children are involved, and, after the delays of our pokey, half-competent contractor, Sean's just now finishing up the trim on the doors, windows, and baseboards.   The move in to Axel's room went pretty smoothly and didn't, as I worried that it would, backfire and cause even more night wakings and restlessness.  He settled right in, happily grabbing at the yellow wall during diaper changes and spitting up on the red and gray carpet tiles.      Axel's also been partaking of the sticky pasty deliciousness known as rice cereal mixed with breast milk.  Except when he's sick, he loves it - grabbing for the spoon with two hands and making his monkey face of excitement at it.  It reminds me making an elaborate paper mache earth for my 6th grade geography class.  Get out some newspaper strips and a balloon and we could make our own solar system with the leftovers.  I don't think this has had much of an affect on his sleep, but he seems to like it, and so we're going to keep on offering him bland mush.       We're also fiercely protective of the bedtime routine.  We rushed home from a slow restaurant, changing our dine-in order to to-go, to get home in time to start the rice cereal, bath, baby massage, books, then bed routine.  With all of this, and allowing a bit of nighttime fussing - never more than ten minutes, because I am thin-skinned and weak - Axel's down to waking up just once per night.     Now, with his cold still in such force that he coughed so hard he made himself throw up, our sleeping through the night plan of attack is on hold.  We've withdrawn the sleep battling troops for some R & R, since we've all been hit by the same late season cold, cough, and aches.  Waking up once per night isn't really so bad, though, especially when compared to the four plus wakings we had before.  The most annoying sleep situation right now is that he's woken up at 5 am the past few mornings, and only been willing to fall asleep and stay asleep until 6 in my husband's arms.  The kid's sick, so I can see how sleeping cuddled up against a warm body would be comforting in the early morning.  I'm hoping the early morning waking when not yet ready to wake will pass when the cold does.      I'm obsessed with sleep - who's sleeping, how long, why, why not.  I'm a sleep-information addict, but all that information's just filling in for the real thing: my sleep craving will only be satisfied by the elusive, blissful full night's rest.       Posted Apr 25 2008, 07:05 AM by knockedup with | with 13 comment(s) Filed under: sleeping through the night, sleep wooing, sleep battles, sleep training, sick baby, baby colds and sleep, sleep solution

• Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream

  First question for a new mama, after the cursory "How are you?"  - "How's the baby sleeping?"  And, in response, I have to lie.  I don't want to be a traitor to my son, and make the asker think that my boy is (gasp!) not a good sleeper.  I feel like I have to protect him from judgement - the same way you'd protect a classmate in the third grade from the wrath of the subsitute teacher by pretending not to know who drew a big-nosed likeness of her on the side of the bathroom stall.    Why is everyone so interested in his sleep habits?  No one asks about his smiles - which come very frequently and often accompany full-body wriggles of delight.  One coworker asked if he laughed yet, which was a nice change in the line of baby-related questioning, even though I had to say "Ummm, not really."  No one wonders about Axel's eating habits, love of track lighting (or his best friend, who he often gazes at adoringly, table lamp), or interest in grabbing the cat's fur.  No one asks about how much he drools - enough to drench his shirt, sheets, the side of his face, and still have more to leave wet mouth marks on my shoulder.  Maybe that's not something I should brag about.    Really, though, how much do a three month old's sleep habits reflect on his strength of character?  Does waking up at 1 or 2 am every night mean that he's going to be holding up banks by the time he's thirteen?  I didn't think so.  So I've got to curtail this unnecessary urge to defend my boy's honor by stretching the truth a bit about his sleep habits.    Here's the truth:  he does not sleep through the night.  A few times, he's slept six hours in a row - and, on one blessed evening when the stars shone like diamonds and the moon was bright, for seven hours.  But then he goes back to waking up every three to five hours.  Even the time he slept seven hours (mostly) in a row, he woke up and made a few grunts and yells and needed some tummy rubbing to settle back down.  I repeat, he does not sleep through the night.     Sometimes, I like his night wakings.  He smiles when he sees me standing over him, and I scoop him up and try not to crush him in a hug.   He's warm and cuddles against me in the rocking chair as he eats.  There's a bonus to all this night nursing, too: I get to keep up on my magazine reading - when else would I be reading Vogue or the New Yorker?   There are times, of course, when I wish that my husband had functioning nipples and could take his share of these sleep interruptions.  He doesn't even move anymore in response to Axel's night noises or when I roll out of bed or even when I turn on the lights.   Though I've always been a deep sleeper, and can fall asleep within five minutes of getting into the passenger seat of a warm car, it's already clear that I'll be the one up in response to nightmares and late night fevers.    The length of time Axel sleeps does not seem to be affected by the amount of rocking he gets before bed, number of bedtime stories read, length of time nursing, wrap of the swaddle blanket, presence or absence of a pacifier, or white noise from the humidifier - though all of these things seem to help him get to sleep, at least some of the time.  Eventually, he will sleep through the night.  He's got to, right?  In the meantime, I'm going to stop lying and, when asked about his sleep habits, answer truthfully that he sleeps like a baby -  not the peaceful, sound sleep of the cliche but in sometimes fiftul bursts.      Posted Jan 31 2008, 08:06 PM by knockedup with | with 26 comment(s) Filed under: baby sleeping patterns, sleeping through the night, sleeps like a baby