1 Mother 2 Another

Friday evening Maddie’s school had a
fall festival, and we threw caution to the wind and went. They had
a chili cook-off, copious desserts, face painting, bounce houses, a
small train ride – I’m telling you, it was big time.
And since Maddie was deliriously happy running around with all her
school mates and the next day was a Saturday, we decided to let the
girls blow a bit past their bedtimes and stay up late.


Now, when I say “stay up late”, everything’s
relative: their usual bedtime is 6:30 p.m. – and even then, I
have to wake them both at 6:30 a.m. to get them up for the day.
We’ve missed family birthday celebrations and free tickets to
shows because of our adherence to this bedtime. But we were trying
an experiment – we’ve been derided by friends and
family as too strict on the bedtime, and thought it was a safe
place to see what would happen. So we didn’t start walking
home until 7:15, and the girls weren’t dressed and in bed
until 7:45.


Let’s just say we won’t be doing that again.

The CPSC issued a government warning today
to stop using infant sleep positioners. CPSC has received reports
of twelve infants between the ages of 1 and 4 months dying from
suffocation due to the sleep positioners in the past 13 years.
Doesn’t sound like a lot, I know, but if one of those numbers
was your child it would.


If you have an infant check out the href="http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm227575.htm"
target="_blank">article – they lay out the reasons
quite clearly.

Yes, we’re one step closer to Cora
being permanently ensconced in a big-girl bed!


So she’s been sleeping on a toddler air mattress next to her
crib for a couple weeks, and she’s handling it like a pro.
We’ve had some emotional wrestling matches over naptime
– she’s starting to give it up, and would just get up
and walk out of the room. But we’ve finally worked it out,
and now she knows she has to stay in the room and take “quiet
time” until I come get her. She usually cries and demands,
“Mommy! Come. In. Here. Right. Now!” for the entire
forty-five minutes, but at least she doesn’t leave her bed.


Other than naptime, though, it’s been smooth sailing, so
Thursday we took one more step – we went mattress
shopping.

Cora’s spent one night and one nap
in the toddler bed air-mattress now, and it’s been relatively
easy, thank God.


We’ve got the toddler mattress set up on the floor right next
to her crib, with all her stuffed animals and blankets spread out
around her. When she first climbed in, she grinned as if
she’d just won the lottery and rolled luxuriously all over
it. I can tell just looking at her that she’s insanely proud
of herself for “finally” becoming a big enough girl to
rate a little more space.

So if Maddie’s night-night routine
is challenging – what with all her incessant questions and
all- then Cora’s routine is downright torture. My toddler is
going through her “I hate bedtime and will do ANYTHING to
prolong it” phase, and it ain’t pretty.


Cora will argue over every aspect of her bedtime routine: brushing
teeth, getting pj’s on, pouring a glass of water – you
name it, she’ll debate it. Almost every step is a knock-down
drag-out fight, and it wears you down, trust me. There are only so
many times I can –gently but firmly – pinch those
cheeks to make her open her mouth so I can brush her teeth before I
think to myself, Heck, how bad can skipping one night of brushing
be?


I know, I didn’t say I did it. I just think it.

When Maddie was first born, Brian and I
did all the new parent research on How To Make An Infant Sleep. We
read up on the whole “routine” thing and dutifully came
up with what we considered a sure-fire hit for inducing slumber: a
soothing massage with “night-night” lotion, a home-made
lullaby mix, rocking, nursing, prayers, and then to bed. It’s
a routine we’ve never varied, and has served us well as we
traveled; we got Maddie so used to the smell of the lotion and the
sound of the music that as long as we had those two things we could
put her to sleep in any room, anywhere.


Of course, her nighttime routine evolved, most noticeably when she
stopped nursing. We’d begun reading books while nursing, and
I was able to (somewhat) easily drop that last nursing without her
noticing. And then just before Cora came we began expanding
Maddie’s world, having Gamma or Daddy put Maddie down without
Mommy there to do the rocking, which went well. I tell you, we were
a night-night machine.

Remember how I said that Cora had poison
ivy? And was teething at the same time? Guess how she expressed her
displeasure with these two situations.


Cora went on a sleep strike.

I know, I know, Maddie’s older than
most kids who still take a nap, so I should be grateful we’ve
had such a great run. But I can see her outgrowing it, and
I’m going to give up that “me” time in the
afternoon only by kicking and screaming.


After all, it’s only been a few short months that I’ve
had both girls reliably napping at the same time every day, and I
cherish that hour or so which I can use to start dinner, pay bills,
or on rare occasions simply sit and stare at the forbidden
television. I count on that time as my sanity saver, and need a
mental break from both girls for at least a few precious minutes a
day. Which is why I took a page from my girlfriend Abby’s
playbook, and began segueing into “quiet time”.

Yes, a week shy of her ten-month birthday,
and Cora has finally slept until 6:30 a.m., three nights in a row.


How did I do this, you ask?


Child abuse.

Last week we sleep-trained Cora. Again.
What with our family bout of food poisoning and colds, Cora had
been getting up every two hours to nurse again, and after everyone
was hale and hearty we spent a couple nights tough-loving it out
with her, finally convincing Cora to sleep without intervention
until around 5 a.m. With me falling into bed around midnight each
night, that gave me almost five hours straight of sleep for maybe
three nights in a row, and I guess I got a little spoiled.


Because, yes, once again, Cora’s up at night.

We’ve been working on finding a
permanent bed for Maddie for about a year now, if you can believe
it. Maddie was nearly two when Cora was born last May, and we knew
we needed to think ahead to make the transition out of the crib
smooth for her. I didn’t think Maddie was quite ready for a
big bed, and also didn’t want to remove her from the crib
only to put Cora in it; I was afraid Maddie would feel replaced by
the “new” baby. So timing-wise, we decided to buy
Maddie a toddler-sized air mattress to sleep on in her room while
Cora occupied the bassinet in our room, reasoning that it’d
be perfect for traveling to visit family or to use for sleepovers
in the future. We made a big deal about Maddie’s new
“big-girl bed” and how exciting it was for her to
“finally” be old enough to use it.

A couple months ago I mentioned that I
used a href="http://www.restorationhardware.com/rh/catalog/product/product.jsp?productId=prod1190002&navAction=jump"
target="_blank">lap duvet from Restoration Hardware for
Maddie’s bed; it’s the perfect size for toddler beds,
is lightweight but very warm, and totally washable. And as she gets
bigger, it’s a great nap blanket/lap blanket that I’m
sure she’ll even take with her to college. I had some people
email and ask when I thought they’d go on sale.


The time is now! For anyone who was interested, I’ve been
keeping an eye on Restoration Hardware’s site and they just
went on clearance; they’re down from $45 to $21.99. I picked
up one for Cora for next year; we’ve got one on
Maddie’s bed and one in the living room for snuggling on the
couch and they’re much used.


So if you’re thinking about it, think fast because once they
go on sale they clear out pretty fast.

At the risk of sounding like a broken
record going on and on about Cora’s (lack of) sleep habits:


MY KID WON’T SLEEP.


Honestly now. She’s approaching eight months old, and
I’m once again back to being up every one or two hours a
night. We’ll sleep-train her, letting her cry it out, for a
night and she’ll sleep maybe six hours in a row the next
night. My body will actually go into a deep enough sleep for
dreaming and I’ll begin to think those bags under my eyes
might go away.


And then she’s back to her old tricks again a couple nights
later.

Yes, we looked directly into the face of
the Beast and are still standing.


Barely.


With Cora at a healthy six-and-a-half months and still getting up
every couple of hours or more to nurse at night (several times on
vacation I nursed her four times in five hours), she has clearly
been needing to nurse to get herself back to sleep. Which means
it’s been time to teach her how to get herself to sleep
without nursing. Because frankly, the things I’m thinking as
I get up all night are not the kindest, and Cora really needs to
start sleeping through the night so we can have a better
relationship.


So we planned for the weekend, when Brian wouldn’t need to be
up early to work. And we set up a slumber party at Gamma’s
house for Maddie both nights so she wouldn’t hear Cora
crying. The house was empty, the stage was set, and right on cue
–


The baby was crying.

I have to admit that I have not been as
good with guarding Cora’s routine as I was with
Maddie’s when she was this age; when you’ve got more
than one kid, you simply don’t have the luxury of planning
your entire day around their circadian rhythms. But I do try to
give Cora her thrice-daily naps in some form, especially since we
all suffer if she doesn’t get them. Thankfully, I’ve
got a few options.

Guess what’s on my mind.


Here’s Cora’s typical nighttime schedule right now:


9 p.m. Cora goes through her bedtime routine, with a nursing and
rocking to sleep. I usually escape around 9:45.

10:30 p.m. Cora wakes up and must eat again.

12:30 a.m. Cora wakes up and must eat again.

2:30 a.m. Cora wakes up and must eat again.

4:30 a.m. Cora wakes up and must eat again.

6:30 Cora wakes up and must eat again.

8:30 or 9 a.m. Cora gets up.

Cora’s over five months now and
still not sleeping all through the night: most nights she still
gets up at 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. for a nursing, rising finally around 9
a.m., though the past couple of nights she went until 4 or 5 a.m.
for her first feeding (which I much appreciated!).


It was right around this point that we sleep-trained Maddie, but
Cora’s clearly not ready for this. First and foremost,
Cora’s still being swaddled to sleep. I’m astonished
she still needs it; again, we started putting Maddie down
unswaddled before she was three months old. But Cora still flails
and startles quite a bit, which wakes her up at night unless
she’s wrapped.


A part of me has been impatient with the swaddling, wondering if
she really needs it; after all, I can’t convince myself to
sleep-train her until her hands are free to help her self-soothe,
and I’d like to get that show on the road soon. Plus, I worry
that she’ll become dependent on the swaddling and start to
need it to fall asleep, like a comfort object. So I decided to try
to wean her off the swaddling blanket, testing out the unwrapping
for nap times over the past few days.


The result? Disastrous.

I’ve always been the kind of girl
who enjoys her bedtime pampering; anytime I’d travel for a
show, you can bet my good down pillows were stuffed into my bags,
along with my down comforter if I could spare the space. Once
married, I quickly brought my husband around to my point of view
and now he’s as spoiled as I am, luxuriating in those
high-thread-count sheets that I score by religiously scouring the
clearance bins, and tucking himself under our yummy down blankets.


And I can already see Maddie following in the family footsteps. She
loves nothing more than to climb onto our big bed and snuggle
underneath the sheets, curling up on her side and stroking the
silky duvet cover. When she was younger, she’d happily pat
the fluffy, feather-filled bedding and you could see the
wistfulness in her eyes that one day she’d have a snuggly bed
like this herself.

A few weeks after Cora was born, Maddie
started waking up crying. Since she had just hit two years old, I
thought perhaps nightmares were beginning. But she wasn’t
waking up screaming – just crying, almost moaning. We’d
go in and talk to her and she’d tell us she was scared of the
monsters in her room. I chalked it up to the change of having a new
baby in the house – perhaps Cora’s cries were waking
her. So we consoled her and talked about it a bit, but didn’t
worry too much.

Cora is four and a half months now, and is
driving me crazy with the sleep thing.


I know that every kid is different, and you should never compare,
but Maddie was sleeping nine or ten hours at a stretch by this
time, nursing, and going back to sleep for another three.
She’d go through these phases when she hit developmental
growth spurts where she’d wake up a couple times a night for
a month or so, then settle back down again.


Cora, on the other hand, has yet to sleep through the night.