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FRIENDS: I am over here in shock this morning because my baby went from waking up nearly hourly and eating three times two nights ago to sleeping until 3:30am last night! I am thrilled, but also feel like I’ve learned some super important lessons these last two weeks that I want to share.
We set out to go cold turkey swaddle free to avoid creating a new sleep crutch to break down the road, and gave it a really REALLY good effort. After eight full nights of trying to comfort Crockett’s nearly hourly wake ups with a multitude of soothing techniques, and ultimately feeding as often as 3-4 times when those soothing techniques would not do the trick, we still had made very little progress. Yesterday I reached my breaking point and finally acknowledged a few things:
What I was doing WAS NOT WORKING. If my goal was to help Crockett learn the skill of sleep, but also in a restful/stress free environment, that was not being achieved by what I was doing. I kept thinking “well tonight might be the night he turns a corner and I don’t want to set him back by trying something new.” Well, guess what? That night we did not find that corner. I finally decided eight nights was long enough and that trying something new for one full night wouldn’t set us back to square one. If it didn’t work, it couldn’t be less effective than what we were currently trying and we would know with confidence that we needed to power through. If it did work, amazing!! I needed to stop fearing the “set back”—babies are resilient. One night of something new wouldn’t “ruin” progress (if you can call what we had done for eight nights progress).
Every baby is different. You will hear this or have already heard this one thousand times, but still you’ll forget how true this is. I absolutely believe in the Moms On Call method. I have seen the testimonies and I have had so many friends reach out reaffirming how wonderful MOC is for their family. It works, time after time. And the daytime schedule has worked wonderfully for us, but nights have been a different story. When I stopped thinking about how “well this works for so many families” and took an honest look at our own situation, I realized we were not ready for the MOC night routine. This is not a criticism, this is a reminder that it is OKAY if something that works for so many of your friends does not work for you. We’ve been working with Emily Blewett of Infantbasicstoddlertraining, a MOC certified consultant, and she has been SO respectful and encouraging during this process, especially when we told her we felt like our family needed to pause our soothing plan for nights and reevaluate in another month (so many good things to say about Emily, i'll write a separate post. I go to Emily with questions about all sorts of topics, not just sleep). It took stopping and really evaluating WHY we were doing this to help us realize that it was okay to stop and try something different. Which brings me to my next point.
Why are you doing what you’re doing? Stop and actually think about your goal. Our goal was to get Crockett out of the Snoo and into the crib (we felt like he outgrew it and wanted more space) and out of the swaddle because he was starting to roll back to tummy. Also, like every parent out there, we wanted more sleep, but more importantly, wanted to make sure we gave Crockett the skill set to learn how to sleep well and not have sleep issues through his toddler years. WHEW, those are some lofty goals for a 3.5 month old baby. And frankly, too many at once (hindsight is 20/20). We had to ditch the swaddle for safety if we were leaving the Snoo because rolling in a swaddle is simply not safe. We probably didn’t need to ditch the Snoo, but when we were in New Mexico the cord was broken and the motion didn’t work. Crockett started sleeping just fine without the motion so we thought it made sense when coming home to make the transition. What we did not realize, is that the “four month sleep regression” — a developmental milestone for babies where their sleep cycles change — doesn’t necessarily happen at four months. For us, it was more like 3.5 months, right when we got home, took Crockett out of the Snoo and plopped him in the crib unswaddled. Oh and did I mention he also had a growth spurt?? He went from 3-4 ounce bottles of breastmilk (in his nighttime bottle) to 4.5-6 ounces. TALK ABOUT GOOD TIMING MOM. JK. Terrible timing. When I reached my breaking point yesterday I stopped and looked at my goals:
Get out of the Snoo and into the crib: Check. This was not the problem. Crockett loves his crib. We’d been putting him in there since he was a few weeks old for a little play time to get familiar and happy with it. He even took naps periodically (swaddled) in the crib and was perfectly content. Okay, let’s stay in the crib then.
Ditch the swaddle for safety: Necessary, but going disastrously. Remind me why I’m ditching the swaddle again??? Oh yeah, for safety. Well, are there other safe ways to ditch the swaddle? Yes. The Merlin Magic Sleep Suit (which so many of you recommended, thanks!). The final kicker to help me realize it was totally sensical for me to try this was reading this Taking Cara Babies blog post on the four month sleep regression, and in particular, this statement: “Bonus Tip: By all means, do not unswaddle for nighttime sleeping unless your baby is consistently rolling over. Then, check into Merlin’s Magic Sleep Suit. If you haven’t read the blog post about transitioning out of the swaddle, you can read that HERE." DING DING DING. This really hit home for me. I could achieve the goal of safely un-swaddling Crockett without torturing him during an already developmentally BIG time in his life.
More sleep for us, sleep skills for Crockett. You know what? He’s a 3.5 month old baby, let’s give the kid a little break here. Emily reassured me it is never too late to learn sleep skills, so why was I trying to teach them now? The artificial deadline in my head was returning to work. The reality is that we as a family are not ready and most importantly, Crockett is not ready! Crockett has so much going on in his life right now. What is best for him to help him get some restful and restorative sleep is to soothe him however we can back to sleep while he goes through his many transitions at the moment. And the Merlin Sleep Suit is part of that solution. By meeting him where he is at, that means more sleep for him and more sleep for mom and dad. I needed to dump the artificial deadline and evaluate Crockett’s readiness and read his very clear cues.
I AM NOT A FAILURE and I am doing a great job. In fact, I’m doing the best job I possibly can and no one can do better for him. This is a probably the most important point on this list. In my head, if I didn’t achieve the goals above, I failed Crockett. Importantly, I never viewed these as failures for Crockett. These were mom fails. It’s my job to make sure he’s sleeping safe and it’s my job to teach him the life skill of sleep. These very long nights made me feel like I was failing him on all accounts, with the added kicker of extreme guilt for him being so uncomfortable un-swaddled. Every day I toiled over what I could do different and whether I should change this or that to try and improve nights. But when night arrived, I was afraid to make a change (see the part about turning a corner above). It took me too many days and nights of beating myself up to realize that I am not failing Crockett. He is so incredibly loved. He is so incredibly cared for. He is so incredibly safe. What I was doing was not working, but that did not mean I failed him. When I stopped calling myself a failure, I was able to reevaluate the above goals and make a change. I reminded myself how hard I was working at this. I am busting my ass to do my very best for him day in and day out. That in itself makes me the best mom for Crockett and the opposite of a failure. (Now go repeat that to yourself because I know we all need to hear that one). You are the best mom for your little one and you are doing a damn good job.
Stop obsessing over sleep. More sleep would be great. Obviously. But what is worse than the exhaustion is the mental and emotional STRESS I put on myself (and my family) about this issue. I am slowly detoxing from my sleep obsession. For me, part of this includes not reading other moms stories about their baby sleeping through the night since 10 weeks in my mom chat boards like the “What to expect” app (which I generally love, just needing a temporary unplug). Reading about all these babies sleeping through the night added to my feelings of failure. And as I’m slowly learning, less sleep does not mean less of a mom.
I am THRILLED that Crockett had one great night of a long sleep stretch. Do I expect it to continue? Absolutely not. In fact, I expect that tonight I’ll be up all night feeding him. But you know what?? I’m good with that. Because he’s only this little once and I’m going to miss how he smiles at me in the middle of the night with such JOY that I’m there with him and his cuddles light up my life no matter what time of the night it is.
XOXO,
The mom next door
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