Naturally Nocturnal

Tags

babies, circadian rhythms, cry it out, Ferber, insomnia, night waking, sleep

Perfect Husband mentioned to his mother recently that Babby had been up screaming for over an hour in the middle of the night.

“You never did that, ever,” she said.

She never sleep-trained her kids. They just slept.

Sleep is such a mysterious thing.

At least, it always has been for me. It’s like this promised land that I am supposed to visit every night, but have never been given a map to.

There are suggestions for how to best battle insomnia: keep the lights dim before bed time, do relaxing activities leading to bed time, don’t lie awake for too long, don’t use bed for stressful activities like homework, etc etc. These suggestions are as vague and unhelpful as Peter Pan’s directions to Never Never Land.

Second to the right, and straight on ’til morning.

As a child I would lie awake and watch the time on my clock pass me by as everyone went to dream land without me.

10 o’clock.

11 o’clock.

12 o’clock.

1 o’clock.

My mother knew that I had trouble sleeping – sometimes I would cry at bedtime, because I was so tired but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. This mostly happened towards the end of the week, on Thursday or Friday, after days of running on five or six hours of rest.

More often, though, I simply complained that I wasn’t tired. Because I wasn’t. Sure, every morning I was exhausted. Even seven or eight hours, achieved on a good night, isn’t enough for a growing child. I was exhausted.

By bedtime, though, I was raring to go. Even when I felt tired, it was a tiredness in my brain: that buzzing feeling you get when you’re desperately short on sleep. But my body never agreed. It was warm and racing and ready to run. My bed was a prison, hot and lumpy. In the morning my body wouldn’t respond. It was cold and heavy and my bed was a veritable haven of pure comfort. I wanted nothing more in the world but to stay where I was, forever.

I don’t think my mother ever fully realized how much difficulty I had. Speaking to her recently, she expressed surprise when I mentioned lying awake until one in the morning every night.

“One!” she cried in surprise.

“You knew I lay awake at night and had trouble sleeping,” I said.

“I didn’t know it was that bad.”

She isn’t to be blamed, because I had never made it clear. My childish mind and my inexperienced mouth didn’t know the words, and had no frame of reference for how bad “bad” really is.

A recent study showed that some children may have much more trouble sleeping than their parents think they do. How could the parents know? They’re sleeping in a room down the hall, and the child probably learned as a baby that making a fuss doesn’t work.

It is because of my childhood memories that I am so hesitant to resort to Cry It Out methods, so long as Babby cannot talk.

It’s not that I think that a short week of Ferberizing (properly done) will have a lasting effect on bonding. Not if the mother is attentive and responsive in all other ways. It would be a mere pea under many mattresses of maternal experiences.

No, it is because I simply don’t think Cry It Out actually helps the baby sleep. I think CIO trains the baby not to cry for its mother at bedtime. That’s not quite the same thing.

It’s basic operant conditioning, and I have no doubt that it works.  That’s how you train a puppy not to cry in its crate. Simple.

Many babies, relieved of the responsibility of crying at bedtime, might drop right off to sleep. Others might lie awake like I did, and the mother wouldn’t know, because the child wouldn’t cry for her.

I think sleep and “sleep training” are separate (if related) issues. One is an involuntary function. The other is behaviour modification.

Am I blaming Cry It Out for children’s poor sleep?

No.

I know my mother Ferberized me when I was a baby, but I don’t think that’s why I have difficulty sleeping. The world is full of Ferberized adults who sleep like logs.

I just don’t think it really affects sleep itself. It affects that baby’s behaviour; it teaches him to go to bed quietly and not cry when he wakes in the night.

I think that many babies and many children drop right off when they go to bed. But I was not one of those children.

This wasn’t unique to my childhood, either. It has stayed with me my whole life. My biological clock just seems to automatically set itself at “nocturnal” instead of “diurnal”. No amount of early morning classes could make me a morning person, or give me the ability to fall asleep before midnight.

I go to bed awake and wake up exhausted, unless I get a chance to sleep in.

Left to my own devices on summer holidays, my natural rhythms always settled into a predictable pattern. I would go to sleep at three or four in the morning, and wake up at around eleven. My insomnia never bothered me on this schedule. I went to bed tired and woke up rested, when I could follow this schedule.

When I entered the working world, the veterinarians who employed me discovered quickly that I belonged on the afternoon shift. Put Carol on morning shift and she shuffles around in her scrubs as though still in her pyjamas. She stares at you blankly for a second before responding when spoken to. When left without an obvious task, she does nothing.

Put Carol on the evening shift, and she jumps for the phone when it rings. She chatters with clients. She sweeps the floor. She is cheerful and helpful. Even competent.

I just recently found out that there is a name for this. I totally fit the profile for Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. It means that some people seem to have a wonky biological clock that is always a few hours off of normal, so morning IS night to them, and evening IS midafternoon.

They don’t know why it exists, and they have no real way to cure it or even treat it. But I think it totally describes me.

The label gives me nothing except validation.

This physical quirk of mine helped me mightily in the early stages of motherhood. Not only am I accustomed to functioning on a sleep debt, but late night wake-ups didn’t faze me, so long as I could keep going back to sleep until I was rested in the late morning.

The problem is, Babby now wakes up naturally at 6:30 in the morning, full of smiles and ready to play.

Since he didn’t have the good luck to inherit his father’s effortless ability to sleep, he could have at least had the good grace to inherit my wonky schedule.

It’s good for him that he seems to have normal diurnal rhythms.

But God, I’m tired.

Overthinking Sleep Aids

Tags

anxiety, babies, books, classical conditioning, comfort object, cry it out, infant sleep, insomnia, lovey, music, no-cry sleep solution, operant conditioning, over-thinking, parenting, psychology, sleep, sleep routines

Hi, I’m Carol and I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

I am using the above as a disclaimer, because this is going to be some classic Carol inconsequentiality.

I’ve read and re-read (parts of) The No-Cry Sleep Solution and I am satisfied that it will meet my needs. As a dog trainer, part of me was hesitant about this book, because the one thing I couldn’t really by-pass in my brain was the little voice that says “cry it out relies on operant conditioning. What could possibly work that does not use operant conditioning, and consequently, CIO?”

After all, how do you teach  puppy to sleep in his crate? Let him whimper. The whimpering behaviour is not rewarded and he learns to stay quiet in his crate. Simple.

But Babby is a lot younger than a puppy. He doesn’t even have his milk teeth yet. If he were a puppy he’d still be snuggling at his mother’s nipples, not whimpering alone in a crate. A puppy, by the time it’s old enough to come home, is developmentally much more like a two year old.

So here I was, trying to find a way to violate basic principles of psychology, and feeling pretty stupid about it.

Then I read the book and wanted to smack myself for being such a moron.

CLASSICAL conditioning.

You know, Pavlov’s dog? Ring a bell and it drools? The form of conditioning that was “discovered” first and the principles of which must be thoroughly understood before operant conditioning (reward/punishment learning) can even be attempted?

FORGOT ALL ABOUT THAT.

The really stupid thing is that I have insomnia.

All the recommendations for people with insomnia are based on classical conditioning:

• Build positive sleep associations (don’t force yourself to lie awake and miserable because that will make you hate sleep more; just get up for a while before lying back down and trying again)
• Create a soothing bedtime routine (dim lighting, warm bath, quiet time with a book)
• Avoid doing things which aren’t sleep (or sex) in bed (so you don’t associate bed with homework, worrying, arguing, stress, etc – actually, I bet they’d rather you don’t have sex in bed either, but I guess they had to draw the line at certain practicalities).
• Etc

I even read Stanley Coren’s book about sleep years ago and he even talked about how the best way to get babies to sleep well was to build positive sleep associations.

Duh.

So, yeah, The No-Cry Sleep Solution tells you how to classically condition your child to fall asleep at certain sleep cues. She talks about bedtime routines (we have one, but it isn’t long enough), weaning baby off of the booba (a definite sleep-association which needs to change if the baby is to learn to self-soothe), and creating other cues that the baby associates with going to sleep, such as a “lovey” (don’t have) and special sleep sounds (we only have “shhh”).

I have been hoping and hoping that Babby would turn into a thumb sucker, but it just doesn’t seem to be happening. So I am still his nighttime soother and this results in him needing to nurse every time he wakes up. I know perfectly well that he’s not actually hungry, but he screams like a banshee without it. The author explains that Babby’s sleep association with booba is so strong that he thinks he NEEDS it to go back to sleep, which is a problem because people naturally wake up every couple of hours. Most of us just roll over and go back to sleep, but if you think you need a booba in order to sleep, you might get upset. She has some tips on how to wean him off of booba, namely popping the booba out of his mouth as soon as he starts to fall asleep, so the association at least doesn’t get any stronger.

In the meantime, I am to introduce a lovey to take my place as cuddle-object, and some cue-music. If I keep the lovey with us whenever he is nursed to sleep, it will smell like me and he will associate it with being nursed to sleep. If I play the same music every time as he is falling asleep, he will associate that with nursing to sleep. The goal is to get to the point where the presence of the lovey and the sound of the music kick-off the sleeping process, while I slowly reduce the amount of nursing he gets before sleep until eventually he falls asleep at the sound of the music/presence of the lovey.

While she never once uses the term “classical conditioning” or allude to Pavlov, her instructions are clear. Pair the conditioned stimulus (lovey/music/bedtime routine) with the unconditioned stimulus (however the baby normally falls asleep, i.e. on the booba) so that it is associated with the unconditioned response (sleep). Eventually, the introduction of the conditioned stimulus (lovey/music/bedtime routine) will result in a conditioned response (sleep). It worked for Pavlov in getting a dog to drool on command. It worked when I taught Beloved Dog how  to pee on command. Why didn’t I think of it as a way to get Babby to sleep on command??

All of this is totally psychologically sound, and now that I think about it, is more psychologically sound than the cry-it-out operant conditiong approach. After all, none of the insomnia tips I have ever read have said “cry frustratedly and miserably in bed until you finally fall unconscious.” So if they don’t recommend it for adults, why do we think it’s the best strategy for babies?

Anyhoo…

Because I’m me, and I overthink everything, I now need to pick exactly the right bedtime lovey and music. After careful examination of all Babby’s age-appropriate toys, I have selected our Eric Carle brand Very Hungry Caterpillar that we picked up in New York, and which you can find pictures of on my Flickr page. It’s a nice, long, huggable baby shape and I approve of its message.

For music, my only option is a hand-me-down lamb that my Boy Cousins used to sleep to, which plays Mary Had A Little Lamb with a wind-up key. Babby already enjoys this music box, although it’s a little sprightly for sleepy time. However, PH is worried about it because the toy is over 20 years old and has metal turn-key. It doesn’t look super safe for a tiny baby. Better for a slightly older child who doesn’t poke himself in the eye when trying to put something in his mouth.

So THAT sent us to the internet to look at other musical options.

Now. I could get a music box or one of those crib-aquarium things that plays music, and use it in combination with the caterpillar lovey, or I could get a glo worm or similar which is music AND lovey all in one.

I’m agonizing over it. Because I am me.

On the one hand, I like the idea of a combo-lovey. If he could trigger his own sleep music, that would be fantastic. Talk about self-soothing! 

On the other hand, I’m an old-fashioned gal and I’m not big on the lovey-needs-batteries idea. When I was a little kid I had (okay, still have) a blankie. My blankie didn’t need no stinking batteries. My blankie didn’t need no flashy lights. I like the idea of my child hauling around a Very Hungry Caterpillar which PH and I bought on our baby-moon in New York. Feels delightfully literary and there’s a family story to it. But it doesn’t play music or give off a comforting light in the darkness.

So, folks, what to do?

Low-tech but literary lovey and music box that I would need to turn on myself at night, or fisher price gadget that plays music for Babby when he hugs it?

The pathetic thing is that I won’t get really serious about sorting out Babby’s sleep associations til I have figured out this important issue.

Oy.

I have insomnia myself, so I have no advice for him…

Tags

baby, breastfeeding, cry it out, crying, newborn, overtired, sleep

My mum went home yesterday.

Babby decided to give us an easy day by going to sleep relatively easily and at regular intervals throughout the day.

Perfect Husband and I were like “We totally rock.”

Then night happened.

Now, most of his 6-7 hour screaming jags have taken place in daytime, and nightime has actually been fairly regular with wakings every 1.5-3 hours and reasonably prompt sleep after feeding/diaper changes.

Not last night.

Today, my first day home alone with Babby, was mixed success. Morning was awful, afternoon was fine. I finally managed to get him to fall asleep at about 10:30 this morning and collapsed into exhausted sleep until 1:30. So that was good. Then he fed, had a diaper change, went in the Sleepy Wrap while we walked the dog, fussed a bit and then slept in the wrap for an hour and a half. Then he woke up, was fed, went back in the wrap, fussed a bit and fell asleep.

This evening was more difficult. It took us an hour to get him to sleep after his dinner meal.

Now, here’s the thing I’m having a lot of difficulty coming to terms with – he seems to need to cry to sleep, sometimes.

The other night we were taking turns walking the floor with him as he had been alternately crying and feeding and crying WHILE feeding for hours. Perfect Husband was flipping through a book I had picked up at the library, called The Baby Whisperer. Now, I had already discounted this woman earlier in the evening because she talked a lot about how “no baby needs to eat more often than every two hours” and saying that once baby’s needs are met, he should be put down to “foster independence.” Both sounds like total nonsense to me and goes against what the lactation consultants and child psychologists say (babies carried more actually have MORE independence later on in life, because they trust their caretaker etc). So I had given her up as a resource. But then PH said,

“Are his eyes staring as if propped open by toothpicks, not focusing on anything?”

“Yes,” I said, “the dog just sniffed his face and he stared right past him.”

“Is he arching his back when he cries?”

“Yep.”

“Then the book says he’s overtired.”

“He hasn’t slept for five hours. We know he’s overtired! What does it say to do about it?”

The book said to lay the baby the hell down and let him fuss himself to sleep.

“That’s cry-it-out! You can’t do that to a newborn. I won’t do that,” I said angrily.

“No, no, it isn’t cry-it-out. She says to stay with the baby and let him know you are with him, but he needs to sleep and anything we do will just continue to stimulate him.”

So against my better judgement, Babby was laid down in his moses basket, covered snugly, and then rocked and rocked and rocked. And damn it all, it worked. Within ten minutes he had settled down.

“The book says he’ll wake and fuss three times before settling down for good,” said my husband.

And damn it all, that’s just what the baby did.

He slept for nearly four hours.

Early the next morning, the same thing happened – he wouldn’t go down. So Perfect Husband took him from me, laid him in his basket, and sat on the edge of the bed, shushing soothingly, watching him and occasionally holding down his arms  when he started to flail wildly (because he flails in his sleep and then hits himself in the face, which wakes him up and makes him cry because all he knows is that someone randomly hit him in the face…), while my baby cried and cried. It was breaking my heart, and I kept wanting to take the baby from the basket, but Perfect Husband reminded me that we had tried that and tried that. It was his turn to try.

It felt like forever, but it wasn’t actually all that long. In half an hour, Babby was out for the count, having had his three drift-offs-then-wake-up-and-fuss episodes.

But I was a mess.

Perfect Husband kissed me and told me he was proud of me.

“I don’t like this. It feels like cry-it-out and he’s just a tiny baby. If we let him cry like this it’ll break his trust in us…” I sniffled.

“You fed him. You changed him. You rocked him. He was still crying. He was crying because he was tired, and we can’t force him to sleep. He needs to learn how to do that himself and we can’t help him. Rocking him and walking with him just seems to overstimulate him. We never left him. We were right there with him, and I even held his hands.”

I knew all of this, and over the last couple of days, PH has been proven right time and time again. He cries… and then he will sleep. I did make PH promise to ignore anything this woman Baby Whisperer says about breastfeeding. I picked up a copy of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding from the library as well, and that has comforted me, because it specifically mentions a growth-spurt in the second and third week, which explains his constant feeding which has been leading to this overtired issue. The constant feeding does seem to be dying down – and my breasts are fuller than they were so I think he was just working to bring in my milk. It’s just a matter of getting him to go to sleep, the poor little insomniac.

Sometimes I can nurse him to sleep, which is always my first choice, but other times he just pulls away from the breast and squirms and cries and that’s when PH steps in with his shhshing noises and his heavy hands pinning down those flailing arms. A friend of mine even sent me a link indicating that some babies are just like this – they need to have a good cry. And the way he just suddenly goes limp after ten or fifteen minutes of fussing shows that it IS exhaustion – not a matter of him crying himself to sleep. But the waiting through that ten minutes is breaking my heart. At least, today, he fussed in his wrap instead of in his basket, and for some reason that was easier on me. I don’t know why it matters, him crying his heart out in his basket or crying his heart out in a carrier, but I can tolerate the carrier easier.

But that doesn’t help at night, when I have to put him down.

There HAS to be a better way.

Sleep, baby, sleep...

Poor kid inherited my insomnia and my webbed toe.

I’m sorry, Babby.