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There She Grows

Lil is not a kid who likes to be forced to do anything, even if its by her own body. If she doesn’t want to go to the bathroom right now, who is her body to tell her she has to. She will downright refuse. Dancing around? Uncomfortable? She’ll hold her ground. She has not had a single accident though, she just waits until she is absolutely desperate, then runs.

Less silly and more just downright frustrating is her refusal to sleep. Yeah, Lil knows she’s tired, but she didn’t ask for that and she doesn’t like it one bit. She’ll do anything to keep herself awake. The more tired she is, the more she wants to fight relinquishing control of it. All toddlers give us a hard time at bedtime right? I hear that a lot. But I think the extent to which this kid fights sleep might be extreme. Its slightly disconcerting when I start telling parents about her daily sleep antics and I am met with a combination of amazement and pity. I have not heard a single parent, of grandma’s generation or mine tell me their kids are the same way.

Her most lifelong go-to method is flailing her legs and arms for as long as she can. As a baby, Lil angrily flailed when she needed to sleep, and fell almost instantly asleep once she was tightly swaddled. She had a very hard time falling asleep without the swaddle for a pretty long time, like 6 months. A part of her hasn’t outgrown that. She even purposely flails her hands into things, even into her face, to slightly stun herself into awakeness. She does this in other ways also.. like tugging her own hair when her arms have become too tired to do much else. After that, she’ll resort to holding her eyes open with both hands… and then holding one eye open by the eyelashes.

Lil has a list of strategic deterrents to employ long before all that. Getting ready for bed is dragged out as long as possible. Putting one arm into a nightgown could be an ordeal that takes 10 minutes. She enjoys brushing her teeth but will run around as long as she can before doing it. Then she is eager to snuggle into her bed for some books, a part of bedtime Lil truly enjoys. She gets very relaxed during books but when its time for me to leave, she uses her distress over that to revive herself. She sits up, making deals for how much longer I’ll stay. (one more song?) Then suddenly she has to go pee (she’ll hold it until now, so its one more time to leave bed). Under the covers again, she needs a drink of water.

Lil can get more comfortable with a nice soft toy, so she sometimes refuses one. Throwing her teddy bears and dolls off her bed, and instead surrounding herself with harder toys like large books, trucks, potato head, etc. We don’t mind if she plays with toys alone in her room once we’re gone, in order to wind herself down. I am glad to leave her with books and a small light on, since she loves looking though them. But, sometimes we can hear her active in her room, reading and singing and banging her toys all over the place for up to an hour. This is getting into 9:30, 10, before she finally drifts off.

She often emerges once or twice during that time, needing to be tucked in again. When we bring her back to bed, we find evidence of her activities around the room. Instead of resting she was buildling a castle of blocks, stuffing things into purses and easter eggs, giving medical treatment to dolls. Her entire bed is covered end to end with books, so there’s absolutely no place for her to collapse and lay down. Finally she’ll allow me to give her a soft toy or ask for one herself, as if succumbing to her body’s need to just get comfy and sleep already. She really is too much.

And, more nights than not, she appears in our bedroom circa 2am. She’ll get in on my side instead of Mike’s, knowing I’m a heavier sleeper. If she can do it without waking me, she’ll stay until I wake up and realize we are totally squished. She’s getting a lot bigger (so am I), and we only have a queen size. I tell her its too early for her to be in our bed, and she’s fine with going back to her own. But I have to get up and carry her or lead her back in there.

During the day, Lil still takes naps at her pre-school and her daycare. Days when she’s home with me, she makes a huge production out of it. She knows that her dynamic with my emotions is different. She always pushes things with me as far as she can before I get angry and lay down the law. But I know that kids transition out of needing a nap, and some days we just do our thing without naptime. Still, there are days Lil is really over-tired to the point of crankiness: a kid who needs a nap. I read books with her in our bedroom, sometimes 6 or 7 of them, until her eyes are closed. If she manages to make it past that and stay awake (eyelash method etc) then its all over. Just not gonna happen. By then I am close to falling asleep in bed next to her instead of getting anything done.

There’s lots I’ve neglected to discuss over the last few months… somewhere our little toddler has bloomed into a bona fide Big Kid and there’s evidence all over the place.

For one thing, Lil hasn’t been in a crib for months now, and I suppose this is worth mentioning! We finally removed the front panel of her crib at the end of November, just as Lilah was nearing the 2 and a half mark. And its been great! She took to it immediately. I was worried at first that with this freedom, Lil would never stay in bed on her own volition. I think that’s why we waited as long as we did. But I had under-estimated her readiness! Read the rest of this entry »

Great news: I am pleased to report that as of a few weeks ago, Lilah is completely past wanting, needing, using a paci at any time!

This is major. Lil was extremely attached to the paci, especially in association with sleep. Here she is enjoying one as an infant. What a cutie! Back then it seemed like a godsend; from the start it easily calmed her and helped her relax. Great invention, as far as I was concerned. But then she wasn’t an infant anymore, and still quite paci-loving.

For some reason it really irks me to see toddlers (and, gasp, even older kids sometimes!) walking around with a pacifier in their mouth. Something just feels inappropriate when I see that. So when she was walking with greater skill and spending more time upright in public, we set the ground rule that the paci was only for sleep times. She used it for naps and at night in her crib, but had to relinquish it when she awoke.

Lil accepted the rule and lived by it for a long time. But the “waci” was such an integral part of her sleep, I was worried it would really be difficult to break her of the habit completely. If I tried to withhold it during naps or at night, she would have a desperate tantrum about it. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, we were idiots! Ha. We waited til after dinner to let Lil enjoy a tiny piece of a birthday cupcake. Afterwards she was clearly exhausted and it was close to bedtime. She went down very easily at first, but it did not last. That small snippet of cupcake was packed with so much sugar that she ended up having one of the worst nights of sleep since her infancy! Right around 1pm she woke up and it was pretty much all downhill from there.

Read the rest of this entry »

oh happy day!

first let me backtrack a bit.    as i mentioned,  lilah’s bad month of october left us with a few regressions in behavior.  one of these enjoyable little treats took place at bedtime.   we had previously achieved a nice comfortable routine after which lilah could be placed into her crib calmly, even while still awake.  she would roll over cuddling wally and i could leave the room without her crying.   so nice.

it had taken what seemed like an eternity to get to that happy point in our lives, but after the long dark period of illness and yuckness that was our october,  that all faded away.   suddenly,  bedtime became an ordeal. even if i waited with lilah until she fell entirely asleep before putting her down, she would wake up the second her head hit the mattress and i’d leave the room to the sound of screams.    we tried to let her cry it out but she would go for a half hour, even more – and it didn’t end after two or three nights either.  this went on for over a week.    our relaxing time was becoming super stressful and frustrating.   something had to change.

so what changed?  three things.  

Read the rest of this entry »

6:30 is early, but its worlds better than 5ish.  worlds.

i knew that lilah’s ability to sleep till 8 could not last forever. but when she started waking up around 5, something had to be done. a couple weeks ago, one of the moms in our playgroup suggested that lilah might be ready to take one nap a day instead of two. and that  this transition may have an impact on her night’s sleep. it was worth a try.

at the time, such a thing had not occurred to me.   lilah was taking her 11ish and 4ish naps every single day and really seemed to need them.    i thought it would be a huge ordeal to try and change this. it took about a week, but i gradually encouraged her to take her morning nap a bit later, and kept her up in the afternoons. almost instantly this change brought the result i so sorely needed: no longer did she wake up like a firecracker in the too-wee hours.

now, lilah starts calling for mommy at 6:30 pretty much on the dot.    when i greet her she is standing up in her crib waiting to be grabbed.    she always requests wally and some other animal, usually puppy but sometimes panda, bear or ducky. then we hang out in the den snuggling while she drinks a bottle and watches sesame street. eventually daddy emerges and we get to spend a bit of time together before work. i no longer dread my mornings.  i now enjoy our predictable and comfy ritual. huge life fix.

ugh, something has changed and i am not loving it. for ages now (lol), lilah has slept until at least 6:30-7. and could almost always relax with me for a while and often fall back asleep for some time after that. this was a good system!

well that’s all over now. these days lilah is wide awake as early as 5:15. and back to sleep after a bottle? forget about it. she is awake and ready to go, make no mistake. no longer will she lay quietly with me in bed, so i’ve moved my desperate attempts into the den. along with a bottle, puppy and wally (both of whom she asks for by name immediately which is so cute), we cuddle on the couch. i turn on her shows quietly (pbs kids) in hopes she will chill while i dose a bit, to no avail. i’m in semi-denial though because i keep trying.

quite simply, this is way too early for yours truly. some reading this are surely rolling their eyes by now, but believe me. never a morning person by any stretch, i was proud of myself for adapting to the 7ish routine. but the difference between 7 and 6 is a massive one… and anything with a 5 in front of it is just not going to work! something has got to be done about this, but what?!

well after all my bitching the other day, lilah surprised us by going to sleep very easily last night.

during her typical dinner time, we went to the driving range and lilah really seemed to enjoy herself there. when she got hungry, i fed her while she watched daddy hit a bucket of balls. there were lots of birds and other people to keep her attention and she was very excited. when we got home, mike played crazily with her right before her bedtime. i mean throwing her around to the point where he was sweating and she was laughing uncontrollably for what seemed like 10 minutes straight, lol.

i thought he was getting her way too riled up and she would never sleep, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. by the time she was put down she was so tuckered out that for the first time in weeks she did not protest. awesome!

so again tonight i am going to have mike go crazy with her right before bedtime to see if this theory holds true and the effortless bedtime routine repeats itself. that will be so so so so so awesome. i’ll keep you posted re: the results of this.

its 10:30 and guess who is still screaming her lungs out in the next room. and she has been brought to a complete sleep already several times by both me and mike separately. its just that the moment we put her down, she turns herself over and sits up. sometimes i even hold her down for a few seconds and she’ll sleep, but as soon as i remove my hand (slowly slowly slowly) and start inching away, she turns over and sits up.

i tried an earlier bedtime. didn’t help. i tried to let her stay up even later. didn’t matter.

its not exactly my idea of fun, spending our entire evening trying to put the baby to sleep. by the time its over it seems like our night is pretty much over as well. are we really going to watch our netflix after all this? we’ll never stay up for the whole thing.

and not only that, but she is still waking up around 4ish lately, sometimes even earlier.

blah

lilah has her own little ipod nano now (lussier gave it to mike for christmas one year) and we’ve been stocking it with all types of lilah-friendly music. she likes a lot of different kinds of music. those who know me may remember what a hip hop junkie i was, but that is one genre lilah does not appreciate much. although she does like gnarls barkley. anyway, last night i left the ipod on in her room playing ‘bedtime with the beatles’ rather loudly on repeat and she slept the entire time and woke up happy. i think our evolving bedtime routine will definitely include all-night music from now on.

it took a while to get it down, but once we did, it worked. for months and months and months. i thought the nighttime routtine was one thing we no longer had to worry about, finally. lilah was in her pj’s by 8:00 each night, and around 8:30 i took her into her room, read her some books and then nursed her. afterwards she was usually asleep, or almost there. i would lay her down in her crib and that was that. on the off-chance that she would not be ready to go to sleep, she would cry a bit and we let her. before too long she’d be out.

well, this all changed in the last week or so. suddenly, our bedtime routine is completely inconsequential. every single night its a stressful ordeal; we start at 8:30 as always, but she’s usually not sleeping soundly until 9:30 or even 10 these days.

the poor thing is teething and it seems to hit her the hardest at night. even after all our familiar nighttime steps, even if she is fast asleep in my arms in the rocker, satiated by books, songs and milk, she will  sit herself up and scream the moment i try to place her down in her crib. and once she has herself sitting up this way, she is seemingly unable to lay herself back down.   which is kind of funny… if it wasn’t so distressing.   so trying to let her ‘cry it out’ a short while as we once did, no longer works. instead she will sit there helplessly for what seems like hours, crying and crying and crying until one of us goes back in to her and it starts all over again. gah its killing me, i don’t know what to do about this. its quarter to ten and the poor exhausted baby is still sitting up in her crib screaming. its depressing to be back to this same story.

no? wait till you have kids.

people sometimes say its a full-time job, but thats misleading. full-time jobs are 40 hours a week. the other 149 can consist of anything.  like galavanting around unfettered.  or lying in a nice comfy bed.

well that joyous sleep breakthrough we experienced a few nights ago was a one-time special. lilah is back to her old habits of waking up around 1 and again throughout the night. having tasted the thrill of success, not to mention the satisfaction of a good night’s sleep, i am wanting it back more than ever. onward and upward.

i am writing this with utmost excitement: last night, lilah slept uninterrupted for 10 and a half hours!!! this is entirely unprecedented. and we couldn’t be happier.

after her bedtime routine, she went down in her crib at 8:30 and i did not hear from her again until 7!!! usually she wakes up once before mike and i go to sleep – maybe around 12:30 or so. then, i sleep with the monitor on the table next to me, and at this point i expect to hear her crying around 2 or 3. and then again at 5 or 6, which is when i go grab her and bring her into bed to be with us for the rest of the morning so we can doze together.

well last night i did not hear a peep out of her until 7 am! i woke up to hearing her happily cooing and babbling on the monitor. not crying! this was amazing. i realized it was getting light out, and was incredibly shocked to discover it was already 7! i laid awake beaming with amazement, realizing i had just slept all night for the first time in over 7 months, and listening to her sweet babbling sounds. i was seriously so relieved and happy i could have cried! hahaha.

finally at about 7:30, after talking happily to herself for a half hour, she started crying and i went to get her. we were so proud of her! not only did she sleep far far longer than ever before, but she actually woke up happy in her crib. first time ever! what a big girl! and i hope this becomes the norm!!!

Lilah has always been a swaddle-happy baby at bedtime. it helps her go to sleep and stay asleep, she loves it and it has been the norm up till now. when i brought her in for her 6 month doc appointment, the doc said that most babies at her age no longer need to be swaddled in order to sleep at night. and that we should try to wean her from it asap because the longer we wait the harder it will be.

we knew it was a bit ridiculous at this point, but i guess i had been reluctant to take that step, for my own sanity.    the idea of her actually going to sleep unswaddled seemed extremely far-fetched; it had never happened before. we decided to wait till we came back from chicago. the family wanted her happy and well rested during her visit. but while we were there, i did start weaning her by leaving one arm out of the wrap.  she was not a fan, but if she was exhausted enough she allowed it.  after a few days of that, i started just loosely wrapping one of her blankets around her body and leaving both her arms free.  this was a major difference from the impervious straight-jacket style swaddle she usually required.  at first she would only go to sleep that way if i held her tightly to simulate the swaddle.   but after about a week, she became more accustomed to the concept and her arms flailed less.

so, the swaddle blankets have been put away for good.  we’re happy with this progess but i have to admit, she does not sleep for as long as she did swaddled. i guess this is something we (and lilah) will just have to get used to.