Gentle Sleep Training, or Why Parent-Child Attachment is Bigger than I Thought

We are on our 3rd night of sleeping training tonight.  I never thought I would be one of those mamas who blogged about such topics.  As I explained in a previous post, we fall for the most part within the camp of attachment parenting, in which sleep training is considered somewhat anathema.  Before little Bean was born, I pictured myself rocking and nursing her off to sleep cozily each night, with the intervals between waking/nursing sessions gradually and comfortably growing longer as her feeding and sleeping cycles matured.  With many babies, this is definitely the case, and those mothers probably think I'm crazy and hard-hearted.  I would have thought so of myself not too long ago. This is one of the many areas where motherhood is humbling me.

This last week, things came to a head. For the last few months, nursing has no longer been a reliable tool to get Bean to sleep.  We've resorted to doing all naps in the baby carrier, which is handy when traveling but inconvenient during a normal day at home, especially if you would like to lie down and rest yourself.  At night, Bean goes to bed at all hours and wakes up at all hours.  And as much as I have loved cuddling with her at night, I think I am ready for co-sleeping to come to an end.  She is very cuddly, but also very much of a bed hog.  Additionally, she sometimes rolls off the bed (don't worry, the mattress is on the floor) and finds herself in strange places of the room.  We've been dealing with culture shock for the last 6 months as we simultaneously try to handle sleep deprivation.  We are grumpy, our marital communication and soul care are going down the drain, and it is simply not sustainable. 

I decided to do sleep training at 3:00 am one morning last weekend, in the city of Athens where we are taking a vacation.  Anyone who knows about sleep training will tell you not to do it while traveling, and I would generally agree with them.  But that night, I knew it couldn't wait.  I was walking around the living room for 2 1/2 hours with Bean in a baby carrier, since she had already nursed approximately 1,0001 times that night and couldn't stay asleep for (it seemed) more than 5 minutes. She couldn't even sleep in the carrier, and she was miserable.  For the first time, I realized deep down that learning to sleep well in a bed was actually a gift to her as much as it was a break for me.  She needed it, too.

While the No-Cry Sleep Solution is a fabulous book on gentle sleep shaping that I would recommend as a sleep tool for all new parents, its strategies have not worked for us.  We needed something more direct.  My plan for the last couple months has been to use Dr. Jay Gordon's gentle method of night weaning at the age of 12 months, before I move her to her own sleeping space.  However, rather than do night weaning  in the family bed (his recommendation) we decided this week to bite the bullet and do night weaning now at 10 1/2 months, and at the same time that we transitioned her to a pack n' play.  We made this decision out of our knowledge of her, and our knowledge of our own limits.  Refusing her milk in the big bed, in our experience, results in a wrestling contest with her jumping on me, crawling around the bed and ramming her head into my chest.  We knew that she would vehemently resist both of these changes (no milk, no family bed), and it just seemed kinder on all of us to do them at the same time, like pulling off a band-aid.  Within minutes, I bought "Good Night, Sleep Tight" on Amazon Kindle, and we were in action the next night.

The method we chose does involve some crying, but it never leaves the child to cry by themselves.  I don't think I would have had the heart to do it any earlier than now, since hearing my baby cry does something terrible to my insides.  But the purpose of this approach is to help your baby accept your soothing touch from the sides of their bed, as you gradually fade away your involvement over the course of a couple weeks.  Even though they are mad, they know that you are there.

Can I make a confession?  In my deepest of hearts, I didn't think (still kinda don't think) that sleep training will work with our baby.  I have often had visions of her, 18 years old and going off to college, still waking up 8-10 times at night.  We have tried alternatives to co-sleeping or night nursing before, but only for short periods of time.  They have always resulted in me saying "It's not worth it; I'll nurse her".   Plus, part of me really mourns this transition; it's taken until now for me to really feel that this is the best thing for our family.  It probably took this crisis point to make me accept that... plus the realization that she is old enough now to handle some frustration without damaging her trust in me.  I will miss those sweet baby cuddles, but I will get my fill of them during the day.

Here is what happened our first night (Monday the 15th):

6:15pm After a bedtime routine (dinner, change diaper and PJ's, book, song, nurse, lights off with white noise), I said "Good Night!" and put the Bean in the pack n' play.  We started early so she wouldn't be overtired, especially since naps had been terrible that day as usual.  At first, she played for a few minutes, then made a noise as if to say "OK, I'm done; get me out of here".  When she realized I wasn't getting her out, she quickly became furious.  For 45 minutes she screamed at me while I patted her head, gave her a blanket and told her it would be okay.  It was terrible.  I questioned my sanity and ethics as a mother; I wondered whether I really wanted this to turn into a contest of wills.  She wailed and reached for me, signing "milk".  As an SLP I was amused but distraught; she hadn't used that sign consistently since she was 7 months old- pulling it out now, really??!? Finally, since she was hysterical, I picked her up to calm her before setting her back down.  She took a minute to calm but started over again as I lay her back down, at which point I quickly offered her (for the 10th time) her sippy cup of water.  She gulped it and passed out at about 7pm, hugging her cup like a teddy bear.  The night had only just begun.

9pm I gave Bean a dreamfeed to make myself feel a little better about denying milk the rest of the night, then went to bed on the couch while Kevin took the first shift of the night in the bedroom.

11:15 pm I woke up to hear horrible screaming from the other room.  It went on and on, stopping occasionally for 15 minutes or so before starting again, for TWO WHOLE HOURS.  This is a parent's nightmare.  I did expect such behavior from my persistent daughter, but...I couldn't help thinking... what if she keeps going like this all week?  I was supposed to be sleeping but instead started internet researching the limits of crying during sleep training, whether this was normal or whether we should call it quits. I was a mess.  This research, which came out this year, did make me feel a little better.  While the researchers don't recommend unlimited, unattended cry-it-out, they do demonstrate that children receiving sleep training with our method  (called "camping out" in the child's room) or with Ferber's system of periodic checks, show no psychological difference in the long-term to children who have not had sleep training.

2:30am My shift started, right as Bean woke again.  I hugged Kevin as we passed in the hall, hanging on for dear life.  He whispered, "She really does go back to sleep".  I went in and my baby was reaching and wailing for me.  I put on an extra T-shirt so I wouldn't accidentally nurse her in my oblivious exhaustion.  I picked her up for a big hug and whispered "I love you very much", then put her back in her bed.  She cried for only about 5 minutes more before collapsing and going to sleep.

2:30-6am A haze of wake-ups, me patting her and saying "It's okay", and her going back to sleep for brief periods before waking again, usually right as I was drifting off.  I start to think that this will never end.  I get so tired that all I can do is mumble at her words that I hope are comforting.  My bed is level with hers, so she pushes toward me through the mesh walls of the pack n' play, bleating feebly.  I feel guilty.  At about 4:30 onward she seems thirsty and gulps water from a cup.  I, on the other hand, am so full of milk that I worry about mastitis and go to pump in the living room, trying not to wake Kevin up.  By six am she is waking every 5 minutes, so I decide that it is time to be morning! I wait until she is sleeping, then turn on the light and announce "Good Morning!"

All day long, I am shot since I only had one or two hours (max) of sleep.  But baby Bean is her happy self, and doesn't seem clingy (Oh good- at least she's not visibly emotionally damaged).  We are doing a lot of baby wearing on this trip, so she gets lots of cuddles during the day as we explore historical sites.

On the second night, I go through the bedtime routine and place Bean in her crib, steeling myself for the worst.  She gives me a mad cry for less than a minute, then rolls over and goes to sleep.  Is it really that easy?  That night she wakes up a handful of times for Kevin and another handful during my shift, and each time goes back to sleep quickly as we pat the bed and say "It's okay baby, lie down and sleep".  By 5 am I think she's ready for the day (okay, so I realize later that was a mistake) but for the most part, night #2 was surprisingly un-traumatic.  The dramatic difference with the first night is overwhelming. 

As we head into night #3 (tonight), I am very hopeful.  I just emerged from Bean's room, where I placed her in the crib and watched her roll over and settle without a single protest.  She took about 15 minutes to drop off to sleep, since she had taken a late nap during the day.  A week ago, if this had happened, she would have been bouncing around despite my attempts to nurse her to sleep.  Now that she is learning to settle on her own, I feel like the world is opening up to me.  Let's pray that this starts to result in longer stretches of sleep, reasonable wake-up times, and naps... there's a lot of work ahead, but this is a huge step for us.

A few days ago I stumbled across this post on another mommy's blog, where she shares about her process of guilt doing sleep training as an attachment parenting mom.  I really appreciate her wisdom (thank you, anonymous mother of Finn).  I have truly felt that co-sleeping helped my daughter's attachment to me, but parent-child attachment is so much more than co-sleeping.  After all these months, I don't feel bad that Bean will be sleeping within arm's reach of me (we're not quite ready to put her in her own room) while I get to cuddle again with my husband. 

I am realizing that in my zeal to be a responsive, loving mother, I bought too much into categorical answers and definitions in my brain ("Attachment parents don't sleep train".  "Letting your baby cry at bedtime is damaging", etc.)  instead of truly looking at MY daughter and what her needs are at different developmental stages.  When she was a newborn, she was exceptionally fussy, reflux-y, and difficult to soothe (my own mother, who has three children, described her later as crying more than any baby she had ever seen).  I feel she really needed us nearby during those first few months.  But now she is blossoming into an incredible, confident, loving little girl.  Attachment to us is very important, but it's time for her to step out a little more on her own in the area of sleep, just around the time that she is getting ready to take those first physical steps in the world.