Cry it out was finally tested

Ever since we decided that we were going to try the cry it out method, the girls have been falling asleep really easily and didn't put us to the test until last night.  A couple of things before I get to a recounting of how it went.

Charlotte has a cold, but it's really mild.  Other than seeming a bit tired, a little bit of goop in her eye, a day of green poo, and the occasional cough or sneeze, she's fine.  Doesn't even really have a booger situation happening which is awesome.  But yesterday she refused to nap.  I tried a lot of different things but any time I would put her down anywhere, she would screetch.  I had her cuddled up on the couch with me for about an hour and she would go back and forth between content and screetching.  I texted K about what was happening because I was frustrated and needed to complain, and because I like to warn him if he's likely to come home to an unpleasant household.  He texted me back that while it may be time consuming, a lot of cuddles might be the only answer.

This has been a bit of a point of contention around here.  At night, I rock and cuddle the girls, but not for very long.  I'm really trying to put them down when they are still awake like I've been taught by the books and by the sleep expert.  But when I get frustrated and walk away, K will cuddle until they are fully asleep.  I sent K the following email because I communicate better when I write than when I talk.

I think you're under the impression that I'm either cold, lazy, or both.  I'm not.  I'm trying to teach the girls something they need to learn.

Hours of cuddles to fall asleep are like feeding tubes to eating.  A feeding tube will get the job done, but they needed to learn how to suck and swallow so they could eat for the rest of their lives without it.  There are reasons why learning this skill are vital.   

1)  During the day, there's just me.  I physically can't spend an hour rocking and cuddling one girl to sleep because the other gets ignored.  If they are ready for a nap at the same time, one would simply get an hour overtired and we'd all be totally screwed.  Tina just went through an entire awake cycle where after eating and her diaper change, she was stuck alone on her playmat so I could do the bedtime routine with Charlotte (minus the bath) in a desperate bid to get her to finally fall asleep after 4 hours of fighting it.  By the time I finally got Charlotte down to the point that I could walk away, Tina was ready for her next nap.  Fortunately she's cooperating and calmly swinging while I pump, but what if I had to spend an hour with Tina now to get her to sleep?  By the time I did, Charlotte would be awake again.  And that's an hour of lost mommy interaction time that she just experienced. 

2)  At the moment, it's safe to allow one to be ignored for a while, but pretty soon, within a matter of weeks, they are going to be mobile and the only way to keep one safe while tending to the other one will be to strap her to something. [Editors note - I was referring to a swing.  I don't strap them to a desk or tree or anything.]  I don't want my kids basically strapped down or caged in a playpen all the time because someone needs me to cuddle them for an hour.  They HAVE to be able to fall asleep within a reasonable time frame for their own well-being.

3)  Insomnia is torture.  I don't think you've ever been an insomniac so I don't think you really understand this.  I don't know how to fall asleep.  It's a skill I never properly learned.  It's not just a matter of not getting a lot of sleep because it takes forever to fall asleep, but the falling asleep process itself can be awful.  I don't want the girls to have to experience that night after night.  If we program their physical rhythms now to understand that when you lie down to go to bed, you quickly fall asleep, insomnia will be a torture they won't have to experience much in their lives.  You don't know how lucky you are to be able to simply lie down and be asleep within a few minutes.

I want the girls to learn how to lie down and drift off to sleep of their own accord.  It's a skill I don't have and it sucks not having it.  And it affects every aspect of our day and the amount of time they can spend with us learning and playing.  Every time we give in and pick them up and rock them to sleep, we are teaching them that they are incapable of falling asleep without our help or by just lying down in the crib.  When they fall asleep, it must be in the crib so they learn that when they lie down, they can fall asleep.  Ok, so rock and cuddle until the stress is gone and they are in a mental place to be able to fall asleep, but the falling asleep itself needs to be in the crib.

I do want cuddles even if it seems like I don't.  I can't wait until they are old enough to snuggle in bed with me for bedtime stories as part of their bedtime routine.  Or crawling into bed so we can all watch Saturday cartoons together.  Or wanting to cuddle on the couch when they don't feel good.  But now is not the time to overindulge myself because my desire for cuddles would undo the teaching of the vital lesson they need to learn. 

Please stop making me feel like I have to defend myself when I don't want to do endless cuddles at night. I will be a cuddler, I love the mornings with Charlotte when she wakes up an hour early and will cuddle with me before the family gets up.  [Editors note - the last few mornings, Charlotte has been waking up but it's not time for her to eat or anything so I've been dozing with her in our bed while K gets ready for work.  I'm somewhat anti-cosleeping or bedsharing due to the dangers that have been pounded into my head, but when K is still around to keep an eye on us and she's wearing her Snuza alarm, well, I've been bending the rule a bit while she's not feeling good.]  But I won't sacrifice teaching them what they need to learn in order to get those cuddles for myself or by using endless cuddles to make falling asleep for one night a little easier.   

We need to bite the bullet, soon, and go through a rough week where we don't allow them to fall asleep while being rocked or cuddled, but only by lying down and drifting off on their own.

So after reading this, he apologized and said he didn't realize he was making me feel like I had to defend myself.  I really have been feeling like he must think I'm just a cold bitch or something because I get frustrated when cuddles take too long.  But after reading this, we got on the same page and committed to trying cry it out and to putting them down while still awake enough to be aware of their surroundings so they know they are in the crib when they do drift off to sleep.

And now, here's how last night went.  All times are approximate.

Tina

7pm - Bottle.  They aren't eating as much right now because they don't feel very well and don't have a major appetite.  We've been making 3oz bottles instead of the usual 4.5 or 5.5oz bottles so we're not throwing milk down the drain.

7:30 - I see a yawn and they are slowing down.  Time to start bedtime routine.

7:45 - Bedtime routine of bath, calming lotion massage, lullaby and cuddles, then in the crib with the soothing mobile lights.

8:00 - Asleep

Charlotte

7:55 - Wakes up from the 2.5 hour nap that I finally got her to take.

8pm - Bottle.

9pm - Gets tired really fast so we skip the bath but do the rest of the bedtime routine and put her down.

Tina woke up shortly before Charlotte fell asleep.  We cuddle Tina, sing her the bedtime lullaby and put her back down.  After only 20 minutes, Charlotte also woke up.  

Starting about 9:30pm, here we go.

Screaming babies, wait 5 minutes, go in and soothe them in the crib, sing lullaby twice, turn the mobile back on and leave.  Wait 10 minutes, repeat process.  Wait 15 minutes, repeat process.  We did not successfully soothe them mind you, but rather we limited our contact to hands on the chest in the crib for comfort and only 2 songs and then leave whether they were soothed or not. Reason being, I don't want them to learn that if they pitch a fit, it will be rewarded with endless attention.  Once they are down for bed, that's it.  Limited soothing.  

15 more minutes go by and K says "that's 15, let's go." and I tell him no.  If we continue to go in every 15 minutes, they will learn that if they scream for 15 minutes, they'll be rewarded.  It's time to teach them they won't be rewarded.  We grit our teeth and sit.  I start considering caving and asking if we're doing the right thing, is this really teaching them what they need to learn and K holds strong and says yes, this is the way to teach them.  No we aren't teaching them bad things, this is good.

We let them scream for I'm not sure, about 45 minutes to an hour.  By now, it's about 3 hours since they've eaten and we determine that they're crossing over from angry to hungry and we can't expect them to fall asleep hungry.  Besides, I wanted to double check that Charlotte wasn't crying herself into having a snotty nose that would make breathing difficult.  

11pm - diaper change (in the crib) and a bottle (also in the crib).  Sing the lullaby once, turn on the mobile, and leave.  Trying to show them that we'll be there for their needs, but not their wants during the night.  Also gave them a dose of Tylenol in case they were achy from being sick and because I know I always have a headache when I've been crying.  We only picked them up to burp them, didn't interact or look them in the eye, we just facilitated their eating.

About 10 minutes of quiet fussing and then asleep.  By 11:20, we were convinced they were solidly down and I started the sleep clock in BabyESP.  

Success!!!!!

We were prepared to go all night, only going in to feed and change diapers every 3 hours.  And I seriously thought it was going to be an all night thing.  But it wasn't!  It succeeded so much faster than I expected!

Both slept about 5.5 hours before they woke up K and he fed them and Charlotte woke me up about 8:45 this morning, very happy and lively with no sign of being sick.  Big smiles when I went to get her up.  She is now taking a nap and Tina is still asleep (it's shortly after 11am) which seems to be the pattern.  I've got a bottle warming because Tina should be up any minute now.

A month ago, I was totally against the cry it out method.  At the time, they weren't ready for it.  Some might say they are still too young, but they've demonstrated that they are learning and that the night time crying is somewhat for manipulation.  Tina will stop and practically pass out the moment she's picked up.  That's why we've decided now is the right time.  Anything we do now is what they are going to learn and unlearning a bad habit is harder than starting off with a good one.  While it's not fun, I think we're doing the right thing.  That it worked as quickly as it did last night (didn't feel like it at the time) further convinces me that this is the right thing at the right time and it should create good habits much faster than I thought it would.  Hopefully, we aren't going to have a week of sleepless nights like I anticipated.  

I see open eyeballs on the baby monitor.  Time to get Tina up and starting her day!

5 months and their first cold

They're 5 months old today.  Yay!

And the girls have their first common cold.  Boooooo!

For a couple of days I've been thinking that Charlotte sounded a little congested and has been a little on the tired side.  This morning she woke up a little early and we brought her to bed with us for about an hour before we all got up to start our day.  We don't allow the babies in our bed very often but sometimes it just seems like the right thing to do.  After K left for work, I saw some green goop on her right eye, it was tearing up a bit and her face was a little red.  So off to the doctor we went!

Nothing to worry about.  They are now old enough that a cold isn't really cause for alarm.  As long as she doesn't spike a fever several days from now (which would indicate an ear infection that she doesn't currently have), a little bit of a fever and general illness is no big thing.  The doctor said it's almost guaranteed that Tina will get it too and right on cue she sneezed and coughed.  Today is day 1 or 2 and I was told that the roughest days will be 3-5, so we have that to look forward to.

Today was also the day to do weight checks to make sure that just breast milk (without the Neosure) is enough for them.  Charlotte's goal weight for today was 12lbs 4oz and she measured in at 12lbs 11.5oz.  Woot!  I'm sure Tina has also surpassed her weight goal of 11lbs 8oz, but I haven't double checked that yet.

Update on the whole sleeping thing - they have yet to test my resolve on crying it out.  Ever since we decided we were going to go for it, the last 3 nights they've gone to sleep really well.  Bed time routine has been pretty easy, taking about a half hour to take care of both kids (K has been home most nights to help) and the song I've been singing at bedtime now seems to have the trigger effect I was hoping to install.  When rocking Tina, halfway through the second time singing the song, she'll yawn and start to snuggle in.  After the third round, I put her in the crib, turn on the soothing mobile and that's pretty much it.  Charlotte is usually the first one to get her song and be put in the crib watching the mobile and the last few nights, by the time the mobile turns off after we've left the room, they're out with little to no drama.

This has been awesome, but instead of sleeping 8-10 hours like they were for a little while, they've started waking up every 4-5 hours to eat.  Growth spurt I guess.  In the past, K has been doing all of the night feedings and letting me sleep a solid night, but...

My milk supply is starting to go down.  Months ago, I was averaging about 60oz a day.  I started pumping less often because that was just so much, and for the last little while, I've been averaging about 50-55oz a day.  In the last 2 weeks, the girls have started eating about 50-55oz a day between the two of them and my supply is now solidly about 50oz per day.  In the last week, we've used up 54oz of the freezer stash and the last bag I froze was Nov 1.

This is no big deal, with what I'm producing and what we have frozen, we should still make it through the first year just fine.  But, I dunno, I guess breast milk production for women can be like penis size to men.  I've got plenty to get the job done, but I'd still like to be really impressive about it.  For a few days, I'm going to pump more often and get up when the girls get up to pump in the middle of the night.  So far, this hasn't increased production at all, I'm still lucky to get 50oz.  If I don't see an increase in the next few days, I'm going to go back to my approximately every 4 hour schedule and sleeping through the night.  It's stupid to spend more time connected to the pump if I'm not going to get anything from it.

Tina's new trick means it's really sleep training time

Tina has a new trick!  She's been demonstrating it almost exclusively for the last 2 days.

Yes, K has taught her how to blow raspberries.  She's hardly cooing now, just blowing spit all over the place.  Hmmmm, do I warn my parents when they come over to babysit or let them discover the spewing spittle all on their own?

I can see you wondering, what does this have to do with sleep training?  Well, it demonstrates that Tina is really capable of learning.  That means that whatever habits we are setting now are habits that are being learned.  So if we have bad habits, we're going to have to unteach them later and that's just difficult.

Tina is also demonstrating that she's learned to cry for manipulation, not just for needs.  Some nights, she'll cry in her crib, then almost the moment we pick her up, she falls to sleep, only to squinch up and start crying again the moment she touches the mattress.  But if we leave her there to fuss, it only takes a few minutes for her to fall asleep (usually).  So she's crying to make us pick her up when she needs to be learning how to fall asleep in the crib.

Tina pretty much just has one cry.  Her face squinches up, she twists from side to side, and then the crying starts.  There's no telling if she's just unhappy, hungry, in some sort of pain, it all sounds pretty much the same.  Charlotte is more, um, honest about how she's feeling.  She'll kind of grunt and make little unhappy noises for things like waking up and wanting attention, or when she loses the pacifier but she won't really cry for those things.  I've heard her lightly cooing happily at the mobile for a while after waking up if she's content to sit in the crib for a little bit.  She'll express excitement with loud, urgent coos, and other times she'll just kind of talk when she has important things to tell us.  So when she screetches, and good lord is it a god awful screetch, I believe her to be in real pain.

When Charlotte doesn't want to go to sleep and just sits there grunting, it's not very difficult to leave her be to fall asleep.  But Tina, ugh.  She screams and gets worked up and it's really, really hard to let her deal with it on her own.

But two nights ago, we decided that it's time to let them cry it out.  We need to stop allowing them to manipulate us into endless rocking and snuggle cycles that go on for hours until everyone is exhausted and I'm crying and K is frustrated because I've lost my patience and it's now up to him to get them to sleep.  At this point, if we continue to endlessly attempt to soothe them, they're going to learn that all they have to do is cry to put off going to sleep. I've read the books, I've heard tips from a sleep consultant, and yup, it's time to cry it out.

So we do bedtime routine.  This is still a little hit or miss, but this is how it went down tonight after their evening nap (K is working the late shift so I was on my own).

Gentle interaction until Charlotte started getting tired eyes.
Give Charlotte a bath.
Put her in the crib in just a diaper and give her a little massage with bedtime lotion.  Turn off main light so it's just the night light and mobile lights.
Get Tina and put her in the crib to watch the lights on the mobile.
Get Charlotte dressed in a onesie and jammies.
Snuggle with Charlotte and sing the lullaby twice.
Put her back in the crib, swaddle her, give her the pacifier.  Turn the mobile on again so she can watch the lights.
Give Tina a bath.
Put her in the crib in just a diaper and give her a little massage with bedtime lotion.

Get Tina dressed in a onesie and jammies.
Snuggle with Tina and sing the lullaby twice.
Put her back in the crib, swaddle, fix Charlotte's pacifier.
Sing the lullaby once more and tell them I'll see them in the morning.
Turn the mobile on one last time (it's on about a 10 minute timer) and the white noise machine and turn off the night light.
Leave the room.

The plan was to let them cry until they fell asleep, but they beat me to the punch and fell asleep on their own! Awesome!

And just as I'm typing this, 2 hours after that success, Tina is waking up and crying.  I'm sitting here wondering if I should feed her (it's been about 3 hours since her last bottle), let her cry, go in and pick her up, try to soothe her with belly rubs and gentle words in the crib?  I just don't know.  I think I'm going to warm a bottle and feed her in the crib, quick burp, then back to bed.  By then, K should be home so we can figure out what to do from there.

In theory, cry it out.  In reality, unlikely to happen.  We'll see how this goes.

I've painted such a horrible picture

So far, I've had a lot of complaints about parenthood.  I stand by every bitch and moan I've put out there, but maybe it's time to mention the few good things that are happening.

We're out of the worst part of it I think.  I'm not wanting to throw myself through a window anymore, and when a baby wakes up when I just got the other one to go down for a nap, I groan in annoyance rather than burst into tears.  That's some major progress right there.

Once we get them down for the night (still waaaaaayyyy too long of a process, but we're working on it), we can count on anywhere between 5-8 solid hours of sleep for ourselves.  Even though each girl will often sleep 10-11 hours, you can only count the time that their sleeps overlap and nobody wakes up to eat.  In awesome husband news, I don't even know what to expect from them during the night time hours because K takes care of it most of the time.  It's very rare that he'll ask me to take care of a night time feeding.  Looking at the records in Baby ESP, it looks like there haven't been a whole lot of night time feedings so yeah, he's getting some sleep too.

For the most part, I feel like myself again.  When the zoloft prescription ran out, I didn't bother to see the doctor for a checkup so I could get more.  While I'm tired, and my body aches (I never used to be on my feet this much or carry anything), I'm not afraid I'm going to fall down at any moment anymore.

So that's how things aren't as bad anymore, here's what's actually good.

They are displaying hints of what their personalities are going to grow into.  I think their personalities are going to take after the person they got their looks from.

Tina is going to be more like K and be really social. Not to mention a total ham.  She just loves attention and interaction, and is go, go, go all the time.  Now that the harness is off, she's talking a lot and just seems so happy.  When I tuck a blanky around her in the swing, she acts like I just gave her a million bucks.

Charlotte seems more like me.  More contemplative, observational.  She loves to play the games, but feels awkward if she has to fully engage with you while playing them.  She pretty much only smiles looking me in the eye when I approach her to get her from the crib or swing.  Once she's acknowledged that she's glad to see me, it's time to smile about other things.  She'll coo and grin while looking at something over my shoulder rather than look me directly in the eye.  She talks a lot so I think she's going to have command over a lot of words, but I think she'll prefer to use them in a format that doesn't require direct interaction (like, oh, I dunno, maybe blogging?  Sound like anyone you read?).

Charlotte's elusive big smile -
not looking at me of course

The girls are smiling a lot.  Tina has the biggest smile ever.  Her whole face crinkles to try to pull the sides of her lips up as high as she can get them.  Charlotte is a little more reserved, and she does NOT want her smile caught on camera, but when she smiles, she sure means it.

Tina's full face crinkle

The biggest thing is that lately they see me coming and they smile because of it.  I get this "Oh goody, you're here!" look as I enter the room.  Can you believe that?  They actually want to see ME!  Grouchy, ornery, ME!  Still shocks the hell out of me.  Charlotte actually gets excited to see me walking towards her.  There are babies in this world that know me, recognize me, miss me when I'm gone, it's just so totally surreal.  If someone else is holding or feeding them and I'm walking around the room, they are watching me.  I still can't quite believe this is true, but I'm the one they want.  It still just shocks me that one will be upset (in the swing or something) and when I walk in to check, that's all it takes to make them smile.

Fortunately they recognize and want K too.  If they didn't, we might have a real problem cuz Mama needs her alone time.