Ack. Sleep. Where?

I've been holding off about blogging again about Sadie's sleep ups and downs, because in the back of my mind I'm always thinking "tonight's the night she'll grow out of it. Tonight, she goes back to the baby she was six weeks ago. I know she's capable of sleeping 12 hours in a row -- she used to do it all the time. Damn it, where did that baby go?"

Well, I finally had to admit that it's not going to happen on its own. As we were warned by our doctor and pretty much everyone else, Sadie's sleep is no longer as peaceful as it once was. And as we muddle through the process of trying to change her now erratic nighttime patterns, our perspectives on how to respond to her constant wake-ups are changing too.

It all started right around the 6-month growth spurt, which I detailed a few weeks back. Sadie was waking up multiple times during the night, always ravenously hungry. When the growth spurt petered out, the habitual wake-ups continued, and it wasn't until I realized she wasn't actually hungry anymore that I was moved to do anything about it.

Thus followed a couple of very painful nights in which we practiced a modified version of the "cry-it-out" method of baby sleep training, which, depending on who you ask, is either a lifesaving invention or child abuse. Call it what you will, but Sadie responded well to it. After only a few nights of going in periodically to pat her reassuringly and replace her pacifier each time she woke up and cried, she figured out that tears weren't going to get her picked up and nursed, so she stopped crying.

Well...sort of. The wake-ups decreased, but they didn't cease entirely. And as of late, they've fallen into a distressing pattern: Wake-Up #1 comes right as we're getting into bed, around 10:30 or 11. Wake-Up #2 hits right around 5am. Wake-Up #3 is usually an hour and a half later, at which point she's up for the day and Mom is bleary-eyed yet again. Also, I'm not talking quick wake-ups; its no longer possible to make her fall instantaneously back to sleep just by putting her pacifier back in her mouth. When she's awake, she sometimes wants to be awake for awhile. And I admit, this is really my fault -- I'd gotten back into the habit of nursing her multiple times at night, just because it's the quickest way to get her to fall back asleep.

I mean look, we're not complaining over here. She's been an absolute dream of a baby, and we're lucky that we got to brag about her sleeping abilities for as long as we did. We definitely deserve a healthy helping of Sleepless BabyCake at this point. But that doesn't make the waking up any easier, and so last week we once again resigned ourselves to employing Cry-it-Out, aka CIO, aka The Ferber Method, aka The Fastest Way to Get Attachment Parents On Your Butt.

Here, in brief, is how the method works: when your baby wakes up and cries, you first wait a minute to see if she'll put herself back to sleep. (If she's anything like Sadie, she never does.) Then, you go in to check on her. Soothe her by replacing her pacifier or patting her chest lightly, but don't speak to her or pick her up. Leave the room, let her cry for three minutes, then go back in and repeat the same actions. This time, let her cry for five minutes, then ten, then every ten minutes until she gets tired enough to fall asleep on her own.  The idea is to help your baby understand that while you aren't going to pick them up, you're still close by.

First, we tackled the 11am wake-up. Night #1 was a resounding failure. The first time she cried, expecting me to pick her up, Scott went in there instead, and she was REALLY not happy to see him. Something in her panicked shrieks yanked me to my feet and down the hall, where I vaguely remember SHOVING my husband out of the way so I could grab the baby before she could be any more traumatized, despite the fact that I was half-asleep as this was going on.

Night #2 worked better. This time I was the first one in there, and although she was mad at me for not picking her up, I only had to go in one more time before she stopped crying and fell asleep. Night #3, she woke up again but quickly fell back to sleep once her paci was back in place. By the next night, she was sleeping soundly and since then it seems she's managed to drop the 11pm wake-up entirely.

So. Now. It's time to move on to the 5am wake-up. This one is going to be a toughie, and Scott and I both know it. In fact, we made a pact today that beginning next Monday, we will resign ourselves to getting no sleep between the hours of 5-6am for several days straight, because I know Sadie is not going to like having her 5am feeding phased out. Once again, this is my fault. I hate getting up early, and so when Sadie wakes up, the only thought going through my head is, "MUST GET HER BACK TO SLEEP IMMEDIATELY." So I nurse her, and she falls asleep in the rocking chair, and then she goes back into her crib and I back to my bed and we both sleep for another hour or two, and that's all well and good, except...

...we're going to start formula soon.

And I'll be damned if I'm going to get up every morning at 5am and warm up a bottle, feed it to her, then put her back to bed and try to get back to sleep myself. There's just no need for it. I know she can sleep in until 6:30 or 7, because she used to do it every single freaking morning. Sorry, kid, but both you know and I know that you don't really need that 5am meal.

Ooh, I'm dreading this so much. As much as Sadie balked at the 11pm Ferberizing, (and the Ferberizing that came before it) I can't imagine what her response is going to be to the news that the nice warm meal she's taken for granted so many dark mornings in a row will no longer be forthcoming. Something tells me the paci is not going to help with this one. All we can do is pray nobody calls CPS on us as we lie in bed, gritting our teeth and checking the clock to see if it's time to go back in and pat her again.

Cross your fingers for us.