Catnap

This post is barely a post. It's more of a thought, which has taken on a life of its own. At one point, it could've been a tweet, but it's bigger than Twitter now. It occupies a significant amount of space in my brain, and needs to be set free in blog form.

I am jealous of my cat. I'm jealous of his ability to indulge so heedlessly, so capriciously in the one thing that has become a luxury in my life. He gets to sleep.

I don't get enough sleep. I do, however, have ample opportunity to contemplate and covet the sleeping habits and proclivities of my cat.

My cat's resting world seems as active as his waking one. I see his ears and nose twitch. I wonder what he's dreaming about: sitting at the window and watching birds fly by, running away from Claire as she tries to pull his tail, tuna fish. Sometimes, he half wakes up from his dream about tuna fish. Eyes like slits, he yawns with abandon and lazily repositions himself for another stint on the couch. He may have just enough energy to get one long sweep of the tongue down his backside before he's sleeping again. His brief time awake seems to really tire him out.

I've actually tried to amuse myself by attempting to wake him up. I figure misery loves company. Claire gets out the maracas. I'll bang them extra loud with her and watch, as he opens one eye, disoriented and confused. I'll softly lob small plastic toy pieces at his chair, while he's in repose on his favorite pillow (animal lovers: don't worry; I have a really bad aim, on purpose).

He has amazing adaptive abilities. He's learned to ignore my interruptions. He has turned resting into an art form, taken it to a whole new level of Zen. Sometimes, a small plastic toy piece will land on him, and he won't even notice (I lied. Sometimes, they hit him).

The Sensei of Sleep, really. If I weren't so incensed, I'd probably be in awe of his masterful ability to so unabashedly embrace slumber.

But my cat has betrayed me. We used to sleep together, snuggle up on the couch for a snooze. Distant memories, now. He seems to have forgotten our good ol' days altogether.

One day, we will find our way back to one another. I can only hope, because I certainly ain't doing much dreaming…


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Victory over Sleep Deprivation

I have an announcement. I've waited a week to share it. I wanted to make sure it stuck first.

CLAIRE IS SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!

I want to shout from the mountaintops that the sandman cometh! I'm shamelessly giving myself credit for making it to the other side of midnight, since George is the only one giving me props for my long slog (Claire certainly didn't). I've been patient (most of the time) and we have persevered!

Another thing I want to shout is, "Sleep training, I told you so! Nah-nah-nu-nah-nah!" First, a qualifier, I have nothing against parents who sleep train. If this decision is right for your family or if it worked for you, great. I would never tell you what to do in your own household.

My target is sleep trainers. More specifically, the ones who sent the message to me that if I didn't get my daughter's sleep in order and pronto, I was doing irreparable damage to her in the form of lifelong sleep issues.

Their voices got into my head. I doubted myself and my decisions for my child. After all, they are called the "experts".

While I was sticking a pacifier back into my year-old child's mouth at 1AM, I was hearing the "experts" warn me that I would face an epic battle to pry said bink from her lips come kindergarten -- along with permanent orthodontic problems. (she gave it up at 14 months, by the way).

While I was rubbing my daughter's back deep in the night, the voices said I should be fostering independence in my child, because she needed to learn to put herself to sleep without my help (um…she did…at 17 months).

While I was breastfeeding her at 3AM, I was thinking about how my baby should be able to go seven hours without eating and of the plethora of advice about how to eliminate nighttime feedings.

It's not their fault the voices got into my head. I wish I had a better ability to believe in myself and have confidence in my decisions. I wish I could've trusted my baby's cues more. I wish there were more voices for me to look to for guidance.

There was one. It was Kelly's mom. Thank god for Kelly's mom.

I was sleep deprived and desperate, when the "experts" were telling me I was doing it all wrong (talk about adding insult to injury). That's when I turned to kellymom.com. I wrote a post about it awhile back. If you are struggling with baby sleep issues, I think it's worth a look. A lot of it still rings true to me today:

Kelly’s mom flat out says don’t believe the hype. Scare tactics are usually designed to sell product of some kind or another, and the product in this case is sleep advice that is targeted at sleep deprived parents not babies burning the midnight oil. In essence, parents are the ones with deep pockets; babies have no pockets at all.

I think she’s right. It’s easy to be swayed by slick websites and offers of professional help when you are near insanity, with a child glued to your boob and have come close to dissolving your marriage in the middle of the night on several occasions. You are willing to consider depriving your child of food. And the business of baby sleep is counting on this fact. 

Kelly’s mom didn’t have a solution to offer, but she provided evidenced-based information that explained the developmental reasons for this grueling sleep schedule. I still felt insane with a child glued to my boob, but I breathed a sigh of relief that our not so normal nighttime routine was normal. 

I don't have a lot advice for moms, because I don't want to give advice. But I do have one piece of advice: Be careful about listening to advice.

Sickness and the Art of Suffering

The tables have turned.

I wrote a post recently about the first time I was sick with Claire. My month-long bout with walking pneumonia cannot compare to this weekend’s stretch of nursing a sick baby. I wish I could say that I rose to the occasion like Florence Nightingale. When Claire’s fever spiked at 103 degrees, I was sufficiently freaked out to endure things like hour-long breastfeeding sessions.

When her sickness diminished to garden variety inconsolability, the pendulum began to swing between concern for my baby’s cries to wanting to stop the sound of crying in my head.

I felt just as helpless and miserable as she did. Time was reduced to minute-to-minute increments. Victory was measured by distracting Claire longer than 60 seconds before crying returned. The golden ring was reaching nap time. Crestfallen, when nap time was taken up by screams instead of snores. I harbored no illusions about how she would sleep at night. During normal times, sleeping through the night is sketchy. Sickness blew that idea right out of the water. She wouldn’t sleep; she wouldn’t eat.

I began feeling like a failure. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make my baby feel better. But it got worse when my empathy for my baby started to wane. “Stop crying,” I implored, as if her cries were a personal attack on me not an expression on her pain. “Go to sleep,” I would plead, as if that simple entreaty would magically do the trick. Not only could I not help my baby, I was now more concerned about me than my child.

I started to worry that Claire would come to believe that she must be good in order to get my love. Now, a mountain of failure began to pile up with selfishness as the cherry on top of the garbage heap.

If I were to look at the bright side of this experience, I would say that I am thankful that Claire will get better. I do feel this way, for sure. But my generalized feeling of shell shock and sleep deprivation is trumping the “this too shall pass” sentiment right now. Claire’s sick and we all must suffer, it seems. Actually, maybe, the lesson is something different. Perhaps the lesson is that sometimes life is just a mess.

This idea is a bitter pill for me, not so easy to swallow.

Awakenings

Weekend brunches with strangers are rife with idle chitchat and searches for commonality. So I wasn’t surprised when a father at a get-together recently asked me if my baby sleeps through the night. This question is the infant equivalent to “what do you do?” It’s too early to compete about who walked or talked first, so sleep is the barometer of parental success. No one agrees about what constitutes “sleeping through the night”, though. So when I say, “she sleeps five hours or so”, I feel pretty good about my answer. Evidently this number was not good enough, because the man launches into advice about upping it.

The story goes that he and his wife slowly reduced the amount of milk they fed their sons at night. Then they substituted water to trick tiny, little bellies into feeling full. And finally… Nighttime feedings eliminated altogether! “Oh really”, I manage to say noncommittally. What I’m really thinking is that this story reminds me of the frog slowly boiled in water that has insidiously risen in temperature. With the conversation ended to his satisfaction, the man walks away with a plate of prosciutto and melon. I turn to George and say, “Well that sounds like a teenage eating disorder in the making”, as I stab a hunk of smoked salmon onto my plate.

I hadn’t thought about this encounter, until everything went to pieces. The Demas family has been going through what’s called “The Four Month Sleep Regression”. When Claire woke up at 12:30, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30, and 5:30AM to eat and was up for good at 6:30AM, this man’s advice started sounding seductive. Coincidentally, a friend of mine had just sent a link to a website proffering help for sleep deprived families. When I go to click on it, there it is in all its glory -- a two-part series on eliminating nighttime feedings. So, huh, here I thought this guy was a kook. Come to find out that this theory has professional support. I read on and stumble upon words to horrify a desperate mother looking for answers: “If you don’t address nighttime wakings, your child may have SLEEP ISSUES FOREVER” (“ever, ever, ever” reverberates in my head). I perk up and start taking this idea more seriously. But as I read on, I’m looking for some science to back up this dire warning. That cannot be found. So I google “eliminating nighttime feeding” and find kellymom.com. Kelly’s mom flat out says don’t believe the hype. Scare tactics are usually designed to sell product of some kind or another, and the product in this case is sleep advice that is more appropriate for sleep-deprived parents than babies burning the midnight oil. In essence, parents are the ones with deep pockets; babies have no pockets at all.

I think she’s right. It’s easy to be swayed by slick websites and offers of professional help when you are near insanity, with a child glued to your boob and have come close to dissolving your marriage in the middle of the night on several occasions. You are willing to consider depriving your child of food. And the business of baby sleep is counting on this fact. Kelly’s mom didn’t have a solution to offer, but she provided evidenced-based information that explained the developmental reasons for this grueling sleep schedule. I still felt insane with a child glued to my boob, but I breathed a sigh of relief that our new not so normal nighttime routine was normal. (My marriage never really was in jeopardy, in case you were worried.)

But I’m no perfect parent, so who am I to judge this parenting technique? I must admit, though, that I wish eliminating feedings would go the way of leeches and thalidomide. So if you’re a parent reading this post and have successfully undertaken eliminating feedings or are consider doing so, I do apologize. Quite possibly, you are judgmental of me for not finding an answer to my baby’s sleep “problem”. Quite possibly, you will have the last laugh. If I write a post a few years down the road about my child’s continued sleep issues, please feel free to comment, “I told you so”.

Stay at home, Mom

When Claire turned two months, I stopped and did some inventory. I realized that I had not been out of the house without her. There was the occasional trip to the doctor’s office or the grocery store, but that doesn’t count. Something had to change or I was going to go insane. I told George, and we picked a date for me to be off-duty. I was flooded with all the possibilities of things to do. Just imagine what you do in your free time and times that number by two months. So the day arrives…I decide to take a nap! A four hour, delicious nap – my dream-life restored! The experts say to sleep when your baby sleeps. That day, I definitely slept like a baby!