sleeping through the night.

as most of my few readers know, i don't usually get too personal on the blog. this may be a slight departure from that standard.

lately, i have been dealing with a form of insomnia. this has never been an issue for me in the past. i have had some wacked-out sleeping patterns in my life -- what with architecture school, where 4-6 hours of sleep a night was the norm, and all-nighters were a regular occurrence. then there was the grave-yard shift at the university library, which i'm not sure i ever really adjusted to. at one point in my life, when i was working in a cabinet shop, in the middle of a record-hot summer (no air conditioning in a wood shop), i would come home, go directly to sleep, and then get up around 3am, have a meal, and enjoy the much cooler, wee hours of the morning for my time off from work. when cosmo was an infant, i was awakened many times throughout the night to feed him. but i have never ever had trouble falling asleep, nor have i ever had a problem falling back to sleep, if awakened. i never felt sleep deprived when cosmo was a baby. i am not someone who takes naps in the middle of the day, but when i am tired, i can fall asleep almost anywhere.



however, recently, this has changed. if i am awakened in the night, usually by cosmo getting up to use the bathroom, i have trouble falling back to sleep. it can take two hours, or more, and sometimes i just give up and get out of bed. the worst part of it is what happens to my mind in those dark hours of the night. i start to worry. about everything. or, just one thing in particular--obsessively. one night it might be student loans, another night it will be some minor task i forgot to complete, or someone i failed to correspond with, who is awaiting a reply. or, i might worry about the tone in my voice when i scolded cosmo for something the day before. whatever it is, it gets blown entirely out of proportion. the other night, i worked myself up into a panic over details of a project i have promised the middleway house, which is far from completion, and barely even started. i became so distressed that i bolted out of bed, then felt incapable of doing anything about it, and fell back onto the pillow, sobbing. i could not stop my mind from racing and reeling. it was like i was in an altered mental state. carl calls it nocturnal anxiety. i finally calmed myself, and began to count backwards from 100. i had to do it twice through, and i also sang cosmo's lullaby songs to myself, but finally, i did drift off into sleep again.

in the clear light of day, none of the things i worried about seemed so bad. i no longer have the pressing sense of urgency, nor the feelings of inadequacy. the night before just seems like a bad trip, or something.

so, i have been asking myself: what is the cause of this new, disturbing trend? could it be aging? i have heard that our sleep patterns can change as we get older. could be diet, or caffeine consumption. i have also speculated that there are things i am stressed about, which i am not fulling dealing with in my waking life. could be all of those, plus other factors.

i have looked at some self-help sleep websites, and considered their lists of suggestions for better sleep. last night, i began to implement some of the ideas, and had plans for what i would do if i couldn't get back to sleep. i am happy to report, that i slept through the night. i never cared about that term when cosmo was a baby. it seemed like THE-most-important-thing to so many people. everyone would ask, "is he sleeping through the night?" it didn't matter to me, because we were all well rested.

now, the phrase has a whole new meaning. for me.

sleep, again

the last time i wrote about cosmo and sleep, i believe i was bragging about how he falls asleep on his own, in his room, with the door shut. that lasted a few months. at some point, having us outside of his room became a focus that prevented him from just relaxing and falling asleep. he would keep calling to us, asking us to put the covers over him. so one of us would go in, put them back on, say good-night, and leave the room. he'd kick the covers off again, and call out for covers. if it wasn't covers, it was something else. he kept getting up, and then getting upset, so finally i just decided he'd get to sleep faster if i just went ahead and laid down next to him. we have been doing that for a while now. sometimes carl does it, mostly it is me. the other night it seemed to take forever for him to fall asleep, and i found myself feeling impatient, frustrated and resentful. so, we decided that meant something needed to change. our ultimate goal for bedtime goes something like this: bath, teeth-brushing, pajamas, stories, kisses and hugs, light out, carl and i leave the room and go about our business around the house, cosmo lies in bed awake for a while, talks to himself, sings (when he is older, reads), and then falls asleep on his own. i don't want him to be dependent on our presence in order to fall asleep.

so, we are always working towards that ultimate goal. last night, i let him know ahead of time that we would be trying something different at bedtime. i told him i wasn't going to lie down with him. it seemed to help, because he had no problem with it when the time came. i stayed in the room, but sat near the door. he said a few things, asked for covers, then pulled them up himself. he settled down quickly, and fell asleep in about 15 minutes. tonight went exactly the same. let us hope this trend lasts.

time for weaning

i've been wanting to write about weaning cosmo, but i also wanted to wait until i was out of the hormonal chaos that followed. i just looked back on a couple of journal entries i wrote in the midst of it, and decided that might be the best way to tell the story.

sept. 30 2007
sunday

it seems at though the time for weaning cosmo has arrived. i am having a lot of trouble letting go. i just don’t want to cross that bridge. it is so sad for me…sad in a way that i can’t quite articulate. it is not rational. i know he’s growing up, i know that the nursing relationship changed a long time ago, and i feel now that what little remains is holding him back. it is confusing and upsetting and unnecessary. the only reason we are still doing it is because of my fear of letting go. just now, when i thought of not nursing him for his nap tomorrow, i felt so sad, that today was our last nursing. i wanted to find another time to nurse him before that, so that could be our last time. i may do that, just to have one last time of looking into his eyes from that vantage point. a farewell. the end of an era. these kinds of transitions are always hard on me. i’ll get through it, but i need to honor my feelings, and spend some time reflecting.

later…

well i just spoke with christa about it. i called her. she was wonderful and perfect. i told her the story of when i stopped nursing cosmo at night. how he hugged me so tight for so long and we cried and laughed and he seemed to know what it meant. she suggested that i find some way to mark, and celebrate this moment. so, i was thinking that since i want to have one last farewell nursing, we could make it be something special and unusual. that way he won’t be confused, think we are going back to night nursing or something. maybe we could go out to lake griffy and take a walk in the woods, and i could just stop and sit down with him and nurse. i know i would love that, and i bet he would too. it would also probably be brief, since he’d be interested in other things.

oct.7, 2007
sunday

we went out to lake griffy that afternoon. after throwing rocks into the lake for a while, we headed into the woods, on one of the trails going up. when we got to the top of the hill, carl and i scouted for a nice place to sit. i chose a big tree to lean against. i sat down and invited cosmo over to nurse. he was surprised and enthusiastic. i held him across my lap and he had one eye looking up into my face. i remembered all those days and nights in the great green chair, when we were both new to all of this, and how overwhelmed i was with love for him. like nothing i’d ever known. this beautiful baby and me-- learning to trust each other, building this bond. the stillness…

i started crying--really all out bawling. carl was next to us, he was tearing up too. cosmo looked up into my face, i smiled at him, he smiled at me and then he reached up and touched my tears with his finger. he paused from nursing for a moment, and put his finger in his mouth, tasting my tears. then he giggled a little and latched back on. i laughed too, and cried a bunch more.

we were there under the tree for a good 20 minutes or so, then i got him interested in something else, and we easily transitioned out of our final nursing time together. i was so happy that we took the time to do this. i really needed it. i continued to be weepy about it all week, but cosmo seemed to be ok. he asked a few times, still asks occasionally, and i remind him of the time we took a walk in the woods, and nursed and i cried and he tasted my tears, and there were flickering leaves in the trees overhead that we both marveled at. he remembers, and he reenacts the scene. he does the sign for crying and says mama. he makes the sign for nursing and tears and then he puts his finger in his mouth to lick off the tears. it is so unbelievably sweet i wanna cry every time i think of it. he will sometimes just tell the story, spontaneously, other times, if he asks to nurse, i just say, “no, remember? we don’t do that anymore. remember our last time, in the woods?” and he’ll finish the story.

we hug a lot more now. i like that.

this picture was taken that day at the lake.

one of the most amazing changes since weaning has been how well cosmo sleeps, and how he falls asleep. he now falls asleep all on his own, in his own room, with the lights out, and the door closed. after his bath, we read stories and then he turns out his lights. he lays down and often says "night night mama." i kiss him goodnight and leave the room. we found that closing the door helps make it dark enough that he won't be distracted (it was actually his idea). at first he would walk up to the door and call for me a couple of times, i'd reassure him through the door, then he'd go lie back down. but after a week or so of that, he now just stays in bed and falls asleep. incredible. he has also slept for 12 solid hours for the past 2 nights, but i don't expect a trend like that to last.

sleepy bear

it happened quickly, overnight you might say. i'd been fearing and dreading the time when i would finally find the courage to try night-weaning cosmo. you see, he's been nursing throughout the night for many months now. it hasn't been a real hardship on me. i always felt like i got plenty of sleep. but i knew, for his sake, that he needed to begin to learn the skill of getting himself back to sleep when he wakes up in the middle of the night. i also suspected that if he learned this skill, he would probably wake up a lot less. i meant to start this process a couple of months ago, but i got the feeling he wasn't quite ready (or maybe it was me who wasn't ready?) and decided to wait. one of my friends was having great success with her daughter at the time, and she's a few months older than cosmo. it made sense to me that if i could explain to him what was going on, it might be easier...he might not feel so confused and betrayed. i wanted to wait until he would be able to understand my words more fully.

so, i guess it was over week ago now, one night he woke up and was nursing, but he wasn't falling back to sleep. he was in fact, thrashing about, climbing all over me, switching breasts etc. it was keeping me up, and it wasn't working as the quick sleep aide that it used to be. so, i stopped the nursing and told him to lie down and go to sleep. he fussed for a bit, then did exactly that. he fell asleep. i was astonished. from that point on, there was no turning back. i still put him to sleep at night by nursing him, but when he wakes up, i go to him, and tell him to lie back down and go to sleep. sometimes i pat his back. a few times he cried and made the sign for nursing, once he even made the sign for "hurt" which just about broke my heart, but i felt so certain that i was doing the right thing for him. each time he cried, it was for less than a minute (often more like 10 seconds), and i just stayed with him and tried to soothe him, and he fell asleep so fast i couldn't really believe it--MUCH faster than if he had been nursing. then, after a few nights of this. he stopped waking in the night. he sleeps for 8-9 hour stretches now, undisturbed! once in a while he will cry out, but when i go to him, he is already sound asleep. i no longer need to assist him in getting back to sleep. he knows how to do it, and does it. once morning comes (any time after 6:30am) i'll nurse him when he wakes up, but night nursing is now officially in the past.

it is tempting to think that i should have tried this much sooner, but i honestly believe that the timing was just right. i don't think it would have gone so smoothly with cosmo had i tried any sooner. i knew i couldn't handle a "cry it out" approach, and i actually have done a lot of research on this topic. i know i had some fear which was preventing me from trying it, but i was also listening to my intuition, and i listened to cosmo. he changed. the previous methods weren't working anymore, so we moved on to something else.

in any case, i am so proud of him, and proud of us.