Ask Moxie

Samantha needs some hugs

If any of you are in HR and would let me pick your brains about something (not my current job--no worries), please email me. Thanks.

Poor Samantha writes:

"I'm at my wits' end.

I don't know where to start.  I do know that my head is pounding and my eye bags are now purple and I long for my baby to sleep for a 4 hour stretch.

I wrote to you over 3 weeks ago and told you how my 12 week old was waking every 2 hours (at least).  Well now I think she has got into the habit.  The gas that was waking her has stopped and I thought that the 12 week growth spurt would be over by now, but at over 15 weeks, she is waking regularly.  She cannot put herself back to sleep.  I'm trying to get my nipple out of her mouth so that she falls asleep without it in there.  Sometimes it works but she wakes after half an hour and nothing seems to get her off.  She gets so upset, she doesn't even realise a boob is being offered.

On top of that, she is finding it hard to get to sleep in the day.  She has switched on to the world and I think it makes it difficult for her to nap.  My husband has been away for the last 2 weeks so I have been the sole parent.  It's so hard when she wakes every 30, 90, 120 minutes during the night and then only naps for 30 or 45 minutes in the day. She is so tired when she wakes from her naps and it's getting harder and harder to get her off (even boob and bouncy chair are failing).  The other day I planned to walk with her in her carrier for an hour and a half to get her a decent nap.  The carrier always gets her off.  And it did - for 20 mins.  Then something woke her and she screamed.  She wasn't in pain because I could stop her from crying for a bit but I just couldn't get her to sleep.  In the end, she cried herself into a sobbing sleep, with me sobbing next to her.

I feel like such a loser.  Young teens have babies, women have twins and toddlers to contend with.  Some people put up with sleep deprivation a lot longer that my measly few weeks before melting down.  I only have one, lovely little baby and I'm exhausted and tearful.  I sometimes feel angry towards her.  I know it's wrong and I wouldn't do anything to hurt her, but I do feel like putting her in her cot and leaving her to cry because none of my efforts are working.  I don't want her to lose her trust in her mummy.

I'm quite certain that the reason she is getting so upset is because she is tired.  Plus, maybe she is picking up on my increased tension as the sleep deprivation continues.

I'm now really resenting breastfeeding.  I found it really hard in the early days but I persevered because I wanted my baby to have the best. My husband and mum were constantly telling how 'breast is best' and I continued.  However, I've never been the best expresser and with my husband's shifts and time away with work, the baby has forgotten how to use a bottle.  Now I can't even get a break in the day.  I long for some sleep.  My friend's baby can go off to its grandmas armed with a bottle (and pacifer - which my baby also has no idea how to use but does have an overwhelming desire to suck) and she can recharge her batteries.  Not me.  How can breast be best when the baby's mother can barely raise a smile in the morning??

I know time will be a great healer, I just feel so exhausted.  My in-laws keep saying how she should be sleeping for longer periods by now and perhaps I should start her on solids.  I just can't see her ever sleeping for longer periods - it's all so foggy.  I have bought Elizabeth Pantley's book, which I've read and will start the logs soon.

I love your website - it's such a comfort.  I know there is probably no solution - just to wait it out, so I'm sorry if I'm wasting your time. I think I'm just searching for hope and support."

Oh, honey. This is just so sad, and I have felt every one of the emotions you've written. Especially the part about how feeling like a loser because other people deal with much tougher things than this.

You're right that the ultimate cure for this is going to be time. But in the meantime, I have a few things to offer:

She's heading right smack into the 19-week developmental leap, which means she's in the middle of the 4-month sleep regression, which reduces many parents to quivering masses of pain and despair. Remember this post when we all shared how awful the 4-month stage was? Let's go back and read the two pages of comments (you have to click "Next" at the bottom of the screen to see all of the comments) about people going through this torturous stage. You are not alone. It ends eventually.

This is probably the worst time possible* for you to be the sole parent for two weeks! That's just adding so much on top of this that makes it worse. Of course you're completely fried. If there's any way to afford it, I'd try to get someone to come in to help you for a few hours a couple of times a week, at least.

Now, about your in-laws: Babies all slept longer when your ILs were parents because the babies all slept on their stomachs. I really wish there was some way for us to let our kids sleep on their tummies without risking SIDS**, because I'm absolutely convinced that that's why we're all so consumed with sleep--they don't sleep well in general, so it's not just that we're nervous or micromanaging or whatever. I get 5-6 sleep-related questions a day, and I just think some of them never would have been issues back in the days when kids all slept on their stomachs.

In theory, I think that if you want to quit breastfeeding, you should feel free to without guilt. Your daughter has already gotten way more breastfeeding than most kids do, and kids are fine on formula. In reality, however, I think weaning right now will make your situation worse because she won't take a bottle from you so that will add another whole level of struggle to your day. Also, weaning could (two days in a row with this warning) push you into full-blown PPD from the hormone drop.

Instead, I think you should ask someone you trust to take your daughter for 3-4 hours every other afternoon so you can stay home and sleep. Send along a bottle of pumped milk or formula. If she drinks it, she drinks it (and whoever she's with might take it--you never know what kind of magic someone will have, and most babies won't take a bottle easily from a breastfeeding mom), but if she doesn't take it, one afternoon isn't going to hurt her, and it'll get you a stretch to help fortify you for the next few weeks until she breaks through the developmental leap.

You can't deal with this all by yourself anymore. You've done everything right. There's no magical way to get her to sleep while she's working on this developmental leap, so instead people need to be helping you to maximize the sleep you can get each day. If no one knows how much you're dealing with, send your husband the link to this post, and ask him to help. Dealing with a not-sleeping baby alone is what propels women into PPD, so don't even begin to minimize what you're going through. You need someone else there to hold that baby while you sleep four 4 hours in a row. And not someone who's criticizing the fact that the baby's not sleeping. Someone who knows what a great job you're doing, and just wants to be part of your team when you need it.

Now, readers, please say something nice to Samantha.

* Maybe not exactly the worst time. A woman told me her husband left for an overseas two-week business trip when their first child was three days old. Yeah.

** Whoever can come up with a no-risk-for-SIDS tummy-sleeping device deserves billions and billions of dollars.

Update on "going insane from lack of sleep"

Remember Stacy, who was going insane from lack of sleep? She wrote back in to update us:

"Reading that post now, I can hardly believe I typed that message to you.  I sounded so exhausted, so miserable! Which I was.  But the news today is much better.  My son, who is now coming up on 1 year, is sleeping through the night.  Ahhh!  I still get giddy just THINKING those words!

I took a hodgepodge of advice from you and your commenters. First, I spent a night in a hotel.  It took a long time to wind down in that hotel bed, and I almost rushed back home.  But once I fell asleep there I got 6 solid hours of blessed rest, and I felt like a million bucks the next day.  I don't know what I thought would happen in my absence, but my husband did fine with the baby.

That successful night convinced me that you were totally right about letting Daddy manage the sleep process.  I started nursing the baby before his bath, PJs, or any other element of the bedtime routine.  Then I would hand him off to Daddy and let them do their thing.  Within a week, they had a great routine down.  Removing the nursing from the bedtime routine entirely was huge, but alone it wasn't enough.

So my husband and I would set goals each night.  The first was a very modest goal - we wouldn't let the boy nurse unless two hours had passed.  Once that was accomplished, we kept inching the goalpost a little further away.  Three hour stretches, four hour stretches, and so on.  During this time, I've been sleeping in the guest bedroom with a white noise machine (finally, that thing is worth what we paid for it) and my husband has been in our bed with the boy.  I left my husband alone to do whatever he wanted when the boy woke up between allowed nursing sessions.  As part of my commitment to letting Daddy manage the process, I would not nurse the baby until my husband brought him in to me.  I had to let go and trust my husband to make the right decision, to discern when the baby truly needed to nurse.  It was hard at first, I was waking up frequently and fretting.  But nothing terrible happened, and in time I began sleeping - really, seriously sleeping - between nursing sessions.  Bliss!  We've never left him alone to cry, but he has done a lot of crying in there with Daddy during this process.  I'm not 100% thrilled about that, but he's obviously sleeping better for it, and he always wakes up sunny the next day.

A couple of weeks ago, we were able to get the boy down to one nursing at night, with 4 hours between.  Then, this week, we eliminated even that one nursing session.  We've been aiming for a 9-5 "no nursing" block. He's been giving us 9-6:30.  It's fantastic.

I know everything could change at a moment's notice, because kids will be kids.  But I'm now rested enough to deal with it.  And I now know that he CAN sleep through, so even if he regresses it won't feel like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I also have to deal with easing myself back into our bed sometime, and I worry about that transition.  Overall, though, things are a thousand times better than they were when you answered my question.  I may not have had the gumption to go through with it without the support from you and the wonderful, sympathetic commenters who have Been There and Done That.  I look back and wonder what took me so long.

So thank you.  Thank you thank you thank you so much :)"

Hooray! You're welcome, Stacy, from me and I'm sure from all the commenters who posted on that question.

I think the moral of the story is that there is no magic cure. Nothing is going to work in three days to make your kid sleep through the night. But if you can get yourself 4-5 hours in a row, you'll have enough presence of mind to be able to formulate a plan that works for your particular family. Then just keep going. A lot of us have been there, and there's nothing sweeter than a long-sleeping baby.

Now, a question from me: My younger son is very clearly left-handed. Can anyone tell me what things a left-hander needs? All I know for sure is different scissors. He's 2 1/2, so is only starting with cutting, but really wants to do it, and our right-handed scissors just aren't doing it for him. I'd also love recommendations of where to buy things for left-handers (online would be great). Thanks!

Q&A: adjusting to naps with caregiver

Apparently this is "sleep problems and single parenting" week. Here's a question that combines both. Kay writes:

"very soon i'm going to have to go back to work (sigh. sigh.).  my daughter just turned a year old, and to say sleep isn't always her thang would be an understatement.  i've gotten used to our schedule/routine for sleep, but soon she'll be taking her naps with someone else.  the only thing that works for us is for me to nurse her down in bed, then roll away.  almost like clockwork, she wakes after 30 minutes, and if i'm close by i can nurse her back down to sleep again.  i've tried rocking, patting, pacifiers, etc. - she wants the real deal, nipple action!  she only takes one nap these days (1-2 hrs when i'm right there), so naptime is a one-shot deal now. if this matters, she does something similar at night, with frequent wakings to nurse (we co-sleep).  and i'm not into CIO, though i say that with NO judgment to others.

okay, so my point is....  how is someone else, someone who she doesn't even know well, going to get her to sleep???  i feel like i need to establish a new routine BEFORE i just throw her into this kind of mix, but don't know where to start.  i've read previous posts about sending in the other parent, etc, but i'm a 100% single parent.  i seriously lay in bed (while she's asleep!) thinking about this over and over.  it's bad enough to feel like i'm leaving her with someone else, much less knowing that she could be crazy sleep deprived.  she is SO active (started walking at 9.5 months and now just goes and goes), but she does not konk out when she's super tired - she just gets more ramped.

in respect to the tension-releaser vs builder, she is a very determined (and lovely) toddler who seems able to cry for long periods of time (the couple of times i've sat in the room and tried to get her to sleep in her crib).  aaaaahhh, it just makes me want to rack up my credit cards so i never have to go back to work until she's in preschool!  i would be so grateful for any suggestions you or your readers (especially single parents) have."

Your guys know I always say "You're the best parent for your child." I mean it, and if it's the one thing I hope anyone ever takes away from this site that's it.

But there's another half to that. Which is that you're the only you there is. Your child is going to react to you in a way that s/he doesn't react to anyone else in the world. That's great in some ways--you'll be the one who gets hugs and kisses and a special kind of love. But sometimes it can feel like you're the only one who can do things.

Your child, though, knows who you are, and that no one else is you. And your child doesn't expect anyone else to be you. Your child can form meaningful rituals and bonds with other people.

At moments of big change, like starting day care, it can feel like you'll be helping everyone if you become the facilitator of those rituals. But it's not your job to create a relationship between your child and someone else, just to set the stage to allow it to happen.

What I'm saying is that whoever cares for your child will come up with a way to get her to nap. She may not like not being able to nurse to sleep anymore, but she'll adjust to going down for a nap with her caregiver, and she'll probably still want the nurse-and-roll-away from you on weekends. But it's not your job to come up with a new routine for your caregiver to follow. Your daughter probably wouldn't accept it from you anyway, and why make tension between you right before you have to change something in her life?

Let the new caregiver come up with the plan that works for them. You stay you, being the mother and doing the mothering that you do when you're with her.

And it's going to be OK going back to work. Unless it's not, in which case you'll figure out something that you can live with. At this age everything changes so quickly that what doesn't work now could be perfect in three months, and vice versa.

Now, in the comments section I need tales of children who will only sleep one way for you, but can go down a different way with someone else. I'll start: My younger son does not like to take a nap when I put him down, and will keep making excuses for me to come back (the whole "I need some water" routine). But he goes down easily with his babysitter, who created a routine involving a "tuck-tuck" (which I assume has something to so with tucking the blankets in around him) that he sometimes requests at times when she's not there.

Anyone else have anything to share? We're assuming she's getting a competent caregiver who's got her own bag of tricks to get Kay's daughter to nap.

Q&A: How long can the swaddling go on?

If you live in the US and can, please vote today!

I still don't know why it's happening, but I keep getting questions in clusters. I've gotten a few recently about how long you can swaddle a baby. A couple of the parents are wondering if they can still swaddle because there's nothing else that gets the babies to sleep, but the parents are worried that the babies are too old for swaddling at 4 months.

(Are we surprised that a big sleep dilemma is rearing it's ugly head at four months? How convenient that that's both the time kids are having sleep problems leading up to the 19-week leap, and also the time when popular culture tells us our kids are supposed to be sleeping perfectly after going down awake and if they're not it's our faults. Sheesh.)

There was also a note of confusion in two of the emails because the babies were still calmed by swaddling, but would then work their ways out of the swaddle in the middle of the night. Without the swaddle, the parents had a hard time getting the babies back to sleep, but the swaddle didn't take. It was a big conundrum wrapped in a Catch 22.

I don't really have much about swaddling. My older son was an anti-swaddler. I think he was just so happy to have room to stretch out finally (he was 9 1/2 pounds at birth) that there was no way he'd have submitted to a swaddle. And my second one was OK with the swaddle, but it just kind of faded away after a few weeks.

It's my gut feeling, though, that nothing bad is going to happen if you continue to swaddle your baby until s/he stops responding to it. Assuming your baby gets plenty of time on the floor with his or her arms and legs free during the day, swaddling isn't going to prevent them from developing physically. And if it gets the baby to sleep at night, hop on it.

One of the writers said "Right now I feel like he will need to be swaddled until he is 3 years old" and that made me laugh, because when kids have that three-year-old sleep refusal thing (we could call it a sleep regression, but that makes it sound all babylike and genteel, which it's not) wouldn't it be awesome to just swaddle them in a big blanket and have it actually work? Maybe I'll add that to the list of Kid Products That Would Sell In The Millions If Only They Worked.

Now, that doesn't help the parents whose kids are wiggling out of the swaddle. That, to me, seems like the signal that the swaddling days are over. But how to transition to something else. My suspicion is that it can take weeks or even a few months, like some kids waver between one nap and two for weeks or months and are miserable nappers during that time. But, again, I've never lived it.

So, swaddlers and former swaddlers of the internet, give us some data points. When did you stop? Did your child fade out of it? Did you make a deliberate decision to stop? What did you do instead?

Q&A: Sleep problems on a regular cycle

Hey, I completely missed the time change! I use my cell phone as my alarm clock, and it switched automatically, so I didn't have any idea it had happened until I'd been awake for three hours. Duh.

After two years, no one asks me anything about sleep that I haven't heard before. Except for this question from Katriona (love that name, BTW), which would surely win an award if I had any awards to give:

"Ok, here's my weird sleep question.  It seems that every month DS's sleep goes wonky (he's 9 months old).  By wonky I mean waking every 45-ish minutes, crying a lot in his sleep, having a tough time settling.  He's not a great sleeper to start with, up every couple of hours to nurse or cuddle, so we co-sleep.  No biggie, I really love co-sleeping.  Anyway, I started to notice that his wonky sleeping always occurs about 2-3 days before a full moon and settles back down 1-2 days after the full moon.  I don't think it's food related (he's still almost exclusively breastfed) and I don't think it's anything in my diet that's effecting him via the breast milk.  In your experience, or anyone else's experience, has the full moon really affected your child's sleep?  Or am I just grasping at straws trying to explain why my son's sleep gets all weird?"

You know, the moon shouldn't be able to affect a child's sleep by the logic of our 21st century world. And yet, if it is, then it is. Just because we don't understand it doesn't mean it's not happening. The map is not the territory, you know?

Are there any ER doctors/nurses reading who know if it's actually true that there are more injuries around a full moon? Because if there are more injuries then, then whatever aspect of the moon's phase that causes more injuries could certainly be keeping Katriona's son up.

The only other explanations I can think of are that 1) if Katriona has her menstrual cycle back and her cycle falls around the full moon time the quantity of her milk could be affected* and that could cause the extra wakings, and the timing would just be coincidental, and 2) the full moon could be causing something else to happen in the environment that's waking up Katriona's son (maybe her neighbor has his men's drum circle meeting during the full moon every month and the drumming and howling wakes up the baby, or the moon makes all the dogs in the neighborhood go nuts and bark all night and that wakes him up, etc.).

But if it's neither of those things, then personally I'm totally willing to just accept that the full moon is making her son's sleep wig out. Anyone want to agree or talk me out of it? Happy Monday.

* Some women experience a drop in milk supply each month right at the beginning of their menstrual periods. The fix for this is to supplement with calcium (preferably a calcium and magnesium mix) for a few days before and into your period each month. I don't think enough women know this, so please pass it on.

Q&A: early nighttime wakings

In the past few days I've gotten four separate emails from four separate moms who are at the ends of their respective ropes with their babies' sleep. The babies range in age from 4 1/2 to 7 months, and they're all sleeping decently (one or occasionally two wakeups) from around 11 to 6 or 7 am.

The problem is that first stretch, from 8ish to 11. All of them report that the babies are waking up every 30 to 45 minutes during that time and crying hysterically.

The moms are at their wits' ends about this. Firstly, because they feel like it's somehow their faults (or at least that they could be doing something they're not doing), and secondly because they're spending 3 hours every night repeatedly getting their babies back to sleep.

I just want to thank all of you who email me for being so honest and funny and poignant win your emails. This was a particularly bittersweet run for me to read, because they were all so funny and desperate at the same time. One mom said all she wanted to do was be able to have sex with her partner in the living room some night without having to go get the baby in the middle of it. Another mom signed off "Yours Truly,StaysUpLateToAvoidBeingWokenUp20Times". (I sooooo remember that phase with my older one.)

It makes me really, really sad that our first reflex is to blame ourselves when our kids don't sleep the way they're "supposed to." Most of the moms reported trying to let their kids cry it out, with horrendous results (two hours of crying! stick a fork in the whole household), rocking, nursing, bottles, no bottles or nursing, pacifiers, swaddling, white noise, etc. etc. The only things I don't think anyone mentioned trying were opiates and reading the babies constitutional law textbooks.

I think sometimes babies just can't sleep. Remember back when this was the witching hour when the babies were 6 weeks old? I wonder if it isn't just some developmental reprise of that.

[Hey--in the time it's taken me to type this I just got another email with this exact same theme! The older newborns of the world are in sleep rebellion!]

I also wonder if it isn't what happens sometimes when the babies are switching from three naps to two, or are going through that combo of movement stuff and developmental stuff that happens at those ages. I wonder if they're just so overstimulated from being inside their own bodies that they're tired and can get to sleep initially, but then can't stay asleep unless there's someone else right there with them the whole time (and sometimes not even then).

I'm not sure we can know the answer. (I know Weissbluth has his theories, but he also tells people just to let their kids cry it out as if that works for every kid and you're an incompetent dumbass if you don't, so I can't really get behind him.) What I do know is that it doesn't last forever. And that if you've tried the things that seem reasonable to you, given your normal lifestyle and your child's personality (like moving bedtime earlier or later, messing with nap times if you can, providing white noise, a full tummy, and a soothing routine), then you should just switch to trying to figure out how to let it bother you less until your baby grows out of it (which will happen--the commenters with older babies and I promise you).

It can be as simple as knowing it happens and it'll pass and it's not your fault. It could mean getting one of those reading light headbands and sitting in the room doing crossword puzzles or reading Lucky magazine or constitutional law textbooks while the baby sleeps. Or it could be a more formal plan to get past it, like switching off 8-11 duty with your partner on alternate nights, or trying to hire a babysitter if you can afford it for one or two nights to get yourself away from the situation mentally. (If you have relatives nearby, this would be the perfect time to ask for help! A few nights of not having to deal with the 8-11 hours could change your whole worldview.)

Anyone have any tales to tell of your own kids doing the wake-up repeatedly thing during that first stretch? Do you think anything you tried worked, or was it just the child growing out of that phase? (I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that people with kids who release tension by crying don't even realize that this sometimes happens, because it seems like the kids who do this waking thing are also tension-increasers. I know my first--a tension-increaser--did it, but my second--who had to cry a little to get to sleep--never did.)

Q&A: four-year-old twins waking in the middle of the night

Cathy writes:

"we have 4yr old twin girls (they sleep in the same room)
within the past couple months one of them wakes up between 1:30am - 4:30 am just to "play" with her toys
she throws a temper tantrum every time we tell her to go back to sleep because it's not time to wake up yet
we have even told her that it's time to wake up when the sun comes up but that doesn't work
we're all tired and frustrated...HELP!!!"

Just awful. I don't have twins, but I have two kids who share a bedroom, and it just makes you want to yank your brain out through your ear when one of them wakes the other one up, especially on purpose.

I don't know if there's any way to stop your daughter (I read the question as it being one of the girls waking up consistently, not the two of them taking turns waking) from waking up, and am guessing that it's a phase she's going through. My suspicion is that if you stopped caring about it she'd get bored and go back to sleep, and after a few nights of this would stop waking up.

So that means the question is how you can stop her from waking her sister. If you could stop her from waking her sister, then it really wouldn't matter if she woke up to play with her toys, because the other three of your could stay asleep. (And if the other three of you stayed asleep she might give up and go to sleep herself from boredom.)

I think there has to be another room involved in this somehow. Either you could separate them for sleep, or make the waking sister go into another room silently to play with the toys. I wouldn't want to have to deal with switching the beds and sleep, so I'd choose to make a rule about going into another room to play. But that's obviously me, and you might want to go the other way. I think if you did make her go into another room (assuming you feel it's safe to do this--my older son could have been trusted not to get into any trouble in the middle of the night, but not all kids could be, and I predict his brother won't be at that age) you'd find her asleep on the floor in the morning.

If this is making your stomach turn because you just can't see separating them or letting her be alone in a room awake in the middle of the night, we're going to have to go back to the drawing board. As you all have figured out, I tend to look for the thing that seems the most direct, but there are often tricks that I'm just not seeing. So does anyone have any suggestions for Cathy? And if you can come up with a way to get a four-year-old to obey we'll all send you chocolate and beer.

Q&A: nighttime parenting is making our eyes bleed

Lisa writes:

"Can you stand another question on sleep?

I guess the actual question is: how do I night wean?

The context is this: I work random shifts in an ER and this means that sometimes I am away for the evening or overnight and my husband has baby sleep duty. When he has to do bedtime, no sweat after we did a little sleep training that involved a little crying.  But the overnights are a different story.  My son (9 months old) has been co-sleeping from day 1, starting the night in a crib and moving into our bed once I come to bed.  I used to be able to nurse him at night and slide him back into his crib but now that he's so mobile, the crib rails have all gone up, and he protests the return so often sleeps next to me, latching on all night when the fancy strikes him.  This is great for all of us except on the 3-4 nights a month that I'm gone for the night.  He totally freaks out, my husband then totally freaks out, they end up awake all night from 1 AM onward with bags under their eyes the next morning.  I blame myself because I know it's not fair to my son to get me some nights and not others without any pattern at all.  So I feel like my only option is to get him to go without the milk bar which probably entails going without sleeping under my shirt.

We tried doing this by letting him yell in protest but living in a little condo makes my husband feel guilty about the noise's impact on the neighbors so we end up jumping ship on that plan.  We also recognize that having him in our room is compounding things but I can't move him into the only other candidate room since we had an intruder break in several weeks ago through that bedroom window, so I'm psychologically unable to put him there.

I just don't know logistically how to night wean a baby who is still in our room without lots of hollering.  But I have to do something because every morning after I work a night shift, my family is falling into little tiny pieces which means I'm trying to fix them and not able to recover from having been up working all night and I am starting to get just a teensy bit resentful.  Plus hugely guilty that I did this by letting my son cozy up to the milk bar all night long for so long.  Help? Please?

I love Ask Moxie and someday when I make the big bucks I'll buy lots of expensive stuff by clicking through from your site first."

Hey, thanks! Somebody bought an expensive power tool a few weeks ago after clicking through here first. I was kind of baffled but happy. (I get a little teeny tiny percentage of all the Amazon.com purchases made after clicking through the links here.)

First, let me say how sorry I am that someone broke into your home. That's got to be a terrifying and creepy feeling. I completely understand that you can't put your son alone in that room.

You know what I'm going to say next: Trying to do anything to change sleep patterns is going to be harder in the middle of a sleep regression phase. So right now (9 months) is probably not going to meet with much success. If you can wait a month you'll probably do better.

And even more next: This isn't your fault, and it's NOT your responsibility to manage the relationship between your son and husband, or fix things the next morning when you come home from work. There is not a single thing you can do about what happens while you're at work, and working out a nighttime routine that allows both your son and your husband to sleep is pretty much your husband's responsibility. Babies learn that different people do different things, so your son will have a different set of nighttime expectations when he's with his dad. It happens all the time that kids go to sleep differently with their mothers, fathers, grandparents, babysitters, etc., so it isn't your responsibility to gatekeep the relationship between your two guys.

I think nightweaning is actually going to be counterproductive, since it'll take that comfort away from your son on all nights, not just when you're not there physically. Especially at this separation anxiety age, it's probably going to end up making him more clingy and crabby all the time, instead of just when you're gone.

Now, having said that, if you truly do want to nightwean for you, and not because you think it'll somehow equalize things, your husband is going to have to take the lead on that. I can't think of anyone I know who nightweaned within a month without basically giving the baby to the non-nursing partner during nightweaning. Most women I know moved to another room during nightweaning (raising my hand), or just played dead at night during that phase. Which leaves you in a tricky situation, since you're going to have to do the thing you've identified as the problem (your husband having to comfort your son to sleep) in order to avoid having your husband have to comfort your son to sleep while you're not there.

You can see why I'm not so excited about putting the nighttime responsibility all on your shoulders. It's a big circle of confusion, nastiness, crying, and sleep deprivation for all three of you.

I really think I'd try to work with your husband on developing his own routine to get your son back to sleep. I don't know if he does much of the initial putting to bed, but that's a start. Many kids seem to be confused when the going to sleep is different from what happens when they wake up in the middle of the night. So having him develop a really solid bedtime routine that he does might make it easier to replicate that in the middle of the night to get them both back to sleep ASAP. It also sounds like he maybe feels like your son not sleeping is his fault, and, again, a non-sleeping kid is not the parents' fault. So if your husband can stay kind of zen about it he may have better luck with the getting back to sleep.

Having said that, this is probably all going to get slightly better in a few weeks anyway, once this sleep regression is past. And the older your son gets, the easier the changes will be on him because he'll just be used to them. And he'll start sleeping longer anyway.

Anyone have conflicting opinions, suggestions, or comments?

55-week sleep regression

And today we tell the tales of the 55-week (13 month) sleep regression. Kamala and Kelly wrote me virtually identical emails detailing how their daughters were waking up and staying awake for more than an hour in the middle of the night, and crying hysterically if they were left alone. (The only difference was that Kamala's daughter has been sleeping through for several months already, so the waking up was new, while Kelly's daughter was still waking up twice a night but used to go back down easily, so the staying awake is new.)

Both girls escalate tension when left to cry, so the experiments Kelly and Kamala and partners have done have only left everyone shaky and unhappy and even more tired yet unable to sleep. Kelly is afraid that she's scarred her daughter by letting her cry for too long for two nights. Both women are afraid that this is never going to end, and don't know what to do when the kids wake up in the middle of the night.

I'd love to talk about some techniques for this period, and I remember clearly both my boys going through it. (I remember feeling extremely insulted by it both times. It wasn't enough that we'd made it through the first year--things just had to fall apart for a month after that year? Honestly.) But I can't remember for the life of me what I did about it.

I think there are two lesson to be learned from that: 1) It eventually ends, and 2) memory is merciful and you won't remember all of the suffering. And if you don't remember it, the baby certainly won't remember it. So I don't think Kelly should worry about having hurt her daughter with the crying.

Is there anyone who's just come through this phase who has some good suggestions about how to make it through the hour+ awake sessions in the middle of the night? I think that if the kid is playing alone in the crib and isn't getting upset, you should just sleep through it. But if the child needs someone there while s/he's awake, there's got to be something that will bore the child to sleep. I'd probably choose Food Network over Sesame Street, and keep the lights dimmed and the sound low to see if it would help mesmerize the child into slumber. But I'm betting someone out there has even better suggestions. Complaining about this phase is, as always, allowed.

FWIW, the skill developed during the 55-week leap is the ability to follow programs, meaning dealing with a bunch of little events. The example in the Wonder Weeks book is the program "eating lunch," which involves the ritual of sitting in the high chair, getting a bib put on, eating the foods, getting cleaned off, etc. No wonder kids start to seem so much more independent at around 14 months.

(Has anyone else been watching the BBC show--now on the Discovery channel in the U.S.--"Last Man Standing"? It's 6 youngish American and British athletes who go to tribal villages and participate in their tests of strength and fighting rituals. I've been watching, thinking how lame it all is. Any woman who'd mothered a child through the age of 5 could beat any of these guys in tenacity, endurance, and feats of strength under adverse conditions. Brazilian piranha-tooth cuts on the legs rubbed with chile powder? Try 36 hours of unmedicated labor.  Zulu fighting sticks? Try sleep regression after sleep regression. Running 30 miles uphill in sandals? Try nursing all night for months and still holding down a full-time job. Maybe I should work up a pitch for the show: kick boxer, triathlete, and bodybuilder vs. mom of high-needs baby, mom of twins, and mom of three kids under age five.)

Some updates

Danielle and I were just laughing because she sent me an email from her client (GoodNites) about a free confidential conference call about bedwetting they're sponsoring with an expert tomorrow (Thursday in North/South America) and then discovered that yesterday's post was about bedwetting, and the reader even mentioned GoodNights. Ha. Anyway, here are the details of the call:

"The client is GoodNites, the disposable sleep boxers and sleep shorts for children who have issues with bedwetting. Our original plan was to reach out to bloggers who are talking about their struggles with bedwetting (with advice and free product), but when we did a conversation audit, we were very surprised to find out that NO ONE is blogging about it.

This is kind of upsetting, because as we all know, the best source of information for moms is from other moms. If no mom bloggers are talking about bedwetting, then the only sources of information are on product websites and on medical sites like WebMD.

So, what we are offering up is a conference call this Thursday at 2pm CST. The call will be with Judsen Culbreth (her bio is below). She will answer any questions that anyone has about bedwetting, and can offer up both professional and personal experience and advice. The call is anonymous, we are just asking participants to register via a completely confidential email to an account we have set up. They can also submit questions via the email, and we will pass those on to Judsen. Also, we are inviting any bloggers to the call who aren't facing the issue, but would like to educate their readers. Oh, and if you want to pass on questions for readers who might feel embarrassed to email them, you can invite them to post them in your comments, if you like.

Again, the call is this Thursday, September 20th at 2pm CST. To get the dial-in information, just send an email to [email protected].

Judsen's Bio:
Judsen Culbreth is a mother, parenting expert and author with both professional and personal experience on the topic bedwetting.  Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Working Mother magazine and Executive Editor at Redbook, Judsen's editorial work has been honored with many awards, including two Parents' Choice Silver Honor Awards.  Culbreth has also appeared on hundreds of TV and radio news programs, including NBC's Today show, CBS Evening News, ABC's Prime Time Live and CNN."

2 CST is 3 on the East Coast of the US and Canada, and noon on the West Coast. Check the world clock to find out what time it is where you are. If you don't want to email in a question you can leave it in the comments here anonymously.

Heather writes:

"Even though I'm only an aunt I read your stuff daily, especially about PPD which I am scared of.  I've bookmarked you series and already told my husband that when the time comes he is in charge of everything in those articles.

Imagine my surprise as I was watching Good Eats on the Food Network tonight and saw him rework rice crispy treats in a way that made me think of you {it was the flax oil that did it for me}.  I thought maybe your readers {who aren't hopelessly addicted to Alton Brown & Good Eats} might like it."

Recipe for Brown Rice Crispy Bar from Alton Brown at www.FoodTV.com

(For those who don't want to click, the ingredients are puffed brown rice, flax seed oil, honey, mini marshmallows, slivered almonds, dried cranberries, dried cherries, and dried blueberries.)

"Only an aunt," pshaw. Anyone who's interested in kids is welcome here. As for these bars, though, well, I love flax seed oil more than most, but I don't think I could go this far. The flax seed oil and dried fruit would be great for postpartum moms (the dried fruit has a lot of great fiber), but this recipe reminds me of the stuff my mom used to try to pass off to us when I was a kid. (I have lots of memories of going to co-op breakdown day to divide the huge bags of carob chips and wheat germ into packets for the individual families. Good times.) Even the lack of raisins doesn't make me want to try it. I'd eat the dried blueberries by themselves, though.

And now for an anticlimactic update on my Kindergarten situation: I still don't like the teacher and don't trust her as far as I can throw her, but she seems to think my son is kind of funny so she's being nice to him. I worry that if what my son says is true, the teacher is scapegoating another kid in the class (call me crazy but I don't think a 5-year-old should be sent out of the classroom three times in the first three weeks of school unless the behavior is violent or seriously disruptive). I'm still going to talk to the principal, but it may be more of a general "what's really going on with her?" session than a "help my kid" session.

He was fine about going to school yesterday, but then freaked out when it was time for me to leave, and wouldn't go back into his room for awhile. But at least he wasn't sobbing uncontrollably like before.

Things I don't want to have happen that have happened to different people in my family: Skip a grade and still end up the smart ostracized kid only younger than everyone else to boot, sit in the back of the room bored reading the dictionary until the teacher yells at you and moves the dictionary too high for you to reach (although you end up with a stellar vocabulary up through the letter H), be told by your kindergarten teacher that you're too "wild" for school (because you have boy energy) so you barely graduate from high school because you believe her, mentally tune out from school from Kindergarten on because there's nothing for you there, be told you're so smart so often that you end up afraid to take any risks because everyone's invested in your success.

That's what I'm afraid of, not a little boredom. And there are a bunch of reasons we didn't end up in a GATE program this year. Once of which was that I felt I was going to be able to trust a Kindergarten teacher, because all the K teachers I've ever known have been resourceful, smart about little kids, and kind. I'm pretty gobsmacked by my instant mistrust of this teacher (I have to say that everyone else at the school had been great).

Jenni, I didn't go in telling her he could read because the teacher and former-teacher commenters here told me not to (not me specifically, but parents) a few weeks ago. They said that teachers figure out the kids quickly anyway, and don't need or want the parents to bring their own prejudgments into it. I was surprised that she hadn't picked up on the fact that my son's reading fluently, especially in light of this whole "read at all costs" thing they've got going with the forced reading at the beginning of class.

Speaking of that, I'm finally getting my routine down so I'm not as frazzled in the morning. My son is insisting on school lunch ("I don't know what it was but it tasted good!" Help...me...) and doesn't eat anything I pack him ("I ate one grape tomato, Mom!"). So I don't have to pack him anything. My babysitter meets us at school and takes the little one. But still, the whole set-up is basically for the birds. And I'm still pissed about all the school supplies (it's not like we can all just pile into the car and stop at Target--it required at least two stores for that list).

How are you guys?