Tuesday, September 7, 2010

More on sleep

Another piece on infant sleep from Mothering magazine (a source I'm going to have to go "eh" on because of their vaguely anti-vaccine stance. Not cool):

One of the biggest crises of confidence that new mothers face has to do with sleep. Mothers feel responsible for their babies' sleep. Others ask mothers if their babies are sleeping through the night, as if this is something the mothers can control. Mothers lie to one another about whether or not their infants sleep through the night. And everyone lies about not bringing their babies into bed with them.
We lie because our society has unrealistic expectations of babies, and therefore we have unrealistic expectations of ourselves as mothers. Our expectations for babies' sleep simply do not coincide with babies' actual capabilities, or with the normal behavior of our species.
Yeah, I think we all lie. Or we probably should if we're tired of questions about how our babies are sleeping.  Mine still doesn't sleep as well as she used to, but I've stopped grieving the loss of my uninterrupted 5-6 hours and moved the hell along to whatever gets me enough rest to be coherent the next day.  Lately, that's been allowing Fidg to sleep next to me in bed. Or more precisely, allowing me to sleep next to her.  Safely.

I'm pretty sure this is safer than what I had been doing before: arranging myself with the nursing pillow and promptly passing out, only to wake 4 hours later and find both of us at odd angles.  The other night, she straight up fell of the pillow, landing with a soft plop on the mattress.  That's far more dangerous than consciously making the decision to allow her to sleep latched on.  She falls face down and I don't wake up for 4 hours . . . or worse, she rolls of the OTHER side of the pillow . . . . . Scary.

Also unhealthy, for me and her at this time, in my opinion, allowing her to just cry it out in the other room.  Forget the wisdom of the CIO method or Ferberizing your child, I know with a near certaintly that my child wakes in the night because she needs to feed because I don't pump adequate milk to stuff her full during the day time.  Kid's gotta eat sometime.

I need to just relax and let biology rule for a bit longer.  This time won't last forever.  And in some ways, despite me thinking this notion was stupid as hell a month or two ago, that extra time we have together at night makes it easier for me to be gone all day - especially now that she's beginning to notice when I leave.

(Okay, mom?)

1 comment:

  1. Fidg wakes up in the middle of the night because her stomach is about the size of her tiny little fist, and she digests her food in less than the 8 hours that we would all prefer. She is hungry, but it is not because of your pumping supply. My kid still wakes up at night sometimes and I was gushing milk like a freaking geyser. I will point you back to one of your other posts. Those fat rolls on Fidg? You (and your boobs) made those! Give your girls a break. They are doing their job.

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