It's too bad I didn't have energy to blog in that first year home with my babies, or my second year, I guess. Man, time goes by fast (they just turned two). I'm sure I would have had a lot to talk about, but of course the memories are a little foggy now. I know that a lot of my time and energy revolved around trying to get babies to sleep. For at least 8 or 9 months, that was a huge focus. I exclusively breastfed my girls (except for their first feed or two, because of complications from my delivery). Breastfeeding was great, and it was a very positive experience overall. The one drawback was that it meant the nighttime feeding/parenting quickly became my sole responsibility. My husband was helpful for the first few nights, getting us positioned & burping, etc., but once he returned to work I didn't see the point in waking him up to change diapers when I was already awake. It took more time and energy to wake him, so I preferred to just do it myself. I quickly learned what would get me back to sleep the fastest (which led to a few bad habits later on). And so began my saga of chronic, severe sleep deprivation.
The beginning didn't start out too bad. Both girls sorted out the night vs. day thing fairly quickly and would eat quickly and be back asleep (there were a few nights of 3 a.m. rocking sessions, which seemed endless at the time, but I don't think it was many). It was around 4 months or so that I got greedy. They had both had 2 nights of 5-6 hour stretches of sleep, and I wanted more. I had read about this miraculous 'dream feed', where you feed your baby (before you go to bed) to fill their tummy when they're still asleep, and it should help them last until morning. This strategy totally backfired for me. Pretty much immediately, one of my daughters began waking VERY frequently. Like every hour (or less). We struggled with it for months. I tried a few methods halfheartedly to try to sleep train her, but nothing plays with your emotions quite like sleep training your baby. And I was so exhausted I wasn't mentally strong enough to cope with it. If I fed her, I could get back to bed, so that's what I did. Over, and over and over. Every night. It sounds awful, and it really was. Insert another in baby in there who needed to feed once or twice, and it was constant. On a positive note, both girls usually went to bed quite easily at bedtime. I would get a 2 hour stretch from 7 pm to 9 pm, (I didn't go to bed at that time because I just wanted to feel normal and relax without babies). And then at nine, my anxiety would start, my heart would pound and I would dread the night. I'm so sorry if someone is reading this and feeling discouraged. I have to say that if I had followed my babies' cues in the beginning, I think the sleep situation would have been much different. What finally changed it was my mom. Around 8 months or so she volunteered to help me soothe my baby back to sleep without the breast (my husband wanted to let her cry it out, but I couldn't handle it). We spent two nights at my mom's house and she let me sleep while she rocked and soothed my baby through the night. The third and fourth nights were tough, but I rocked her, and shushed her, and patted her bum back to sleep. No more night feedings. She still woke up one or two times a night, for a few more months, but it was nothing in comparison. You become accustomed to waking up, so one or two times was totally manageable. My other daughter, in the midst of all of this, was a very good sleeper. At seven months I moved her into a separate bedroom from her sister, because I didn't think it was fair for her to have to go through sleep training when she didn't need it. I'm sure she would have been that baby that sleeps through the night at 6 or 8 weeks, but because her sister wasn't that baby, it affected her sleep too. Anyways, that was the nighttime sleep.
The daytime was another story. Let's just say that figuring out a baby's sleep pattern is one of the toughest codes to crack. And then it changes, it changes again, and then again. 4 naps, 3 naps, 2 naps, 1 nap. And there's always an awkward in-between time where it's too many or not enough. No one has an answer for this except for your baby, and they're not the best communicators. Are they under-tired? Are they overtired? Are they in pain? What is it? You're tired, why don't you want to sleep? What did I do yesterday that worked and why isn't it working today? These are the thoughts that my days revolved around for months. It took so much time and energy to get my tired babies to sleep, and then the time they slept would be so short, and they'd be overtired. It was such a vicious cycle. I remember the day vividly when both of my daughters went down for a nap at the same time and they slept for almost 2 hours. At the same time. And then they did it again in the afternoon (so did I). They were nine months old when this happened. So for the last 2 months of my maternity leave, I enjoyed some blissful days with happy, rested girls, and I was a happy, rested mommy.
Reading this, I realize how negative it sounds. Sleep deprivation has been the biggest challenge I have dealt with as a parent. But that first year also included countless incredible moments, and I would do it all again.
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