Jonah: 5 Month Update

Weight: 18 lbs

Clothes Size: 6-9 mo

Milestones:

-Sitting up!  Jonah’s officially a baby-sitter (or, a sitting-baby, I guess).  He can sit by himself for several minutes at a time now before he teeters over (which is adorable because regardless how he lands—on his side, on his back or face down—he doesn’t seem to mind one bit). 

-Motor control: Jonah grabs pretty much anything he can get his hands on (he especially loves holding and grabbing faces) and brings it to his mouth.  He can even coordinate both hands enough to (sort of) pick up a big squishy block.

-His first tooth is emerging! (Without much fussing or fevers, knock on wood.)

"J" is for Jonah.

Favorite Activities:

-Walks in the stroller, especially in the late afternoon.  We’ve made a ritual of going on a walk around the neighborhood after Jake gets home from work.  We bundle Jonah up and as soon as we get moving he immediately calms down, relaxes his body and peacefully observes the big wide world.  It’s awesome.  Jake and I can get in some good conversation, exercise and fresh air and Jonah seems to enjoy the ride.  I’m not sure what we’ll do once daylight savings time hits; it’ll be too dark to walk as a family after work. Maybe we’ll become mall walkers…

-Being outside.  Sitting on a blanket in the yard, swinging on the porch swing, lying in the hammock, all of it seems to make this little guy happy. 

-Reading: We read him several board books each day and Jake reads a story from the Jesus Storybook Bible while I nurse him before bed each night.  He really seems to enjoy looking at the pictures and “helping” to turn the pages. 

-The exersaucer remains a big hit. 

Bundled up for an evening walk.  

Digging the exersaucer. 

Reading on the porch swing with Mom. 

Sleep:

We took our first foray into sleep training this month.  It was challenging, but all in all, I’d say a great success (for nighttime, at least).  Jonah now goes to bed drowsy, but awake, around 7:00pm (after a bath, massage, swaddle, feeding and kisses) and we rarely hear from him before 5:00am anymore.  Most nights he fusses a bit before he falls asleep (rarely he’ll cry for longer than 15 minutes) and every now and then he’ll wake up in the middle of the night and put himself back to sleep after a bit of crying. 

-Naps are still a struggle.  We attempted sleep training for naps, but abandoned it after a couple days of extended crying (crying all the way through naptime on a number of occasions…absolute torture). So we still bounce or nurse him to sleep for naps, and they still last, on average, about 45 minutes. 

Things I Want to Remember:

-My mom visited for a long weekend while Jake went away for a wedding in Charleston, SC.  The weather was terrible (cold and rainy) but we made the best of it: cooking big meals to freeze for later, bundling up for walks during breaks in the rain, repotting a bunch of succulents that had grown unruly, making homemade baby food (which we’ll start offering to Jonah this month!), buying and assembling a highchair and drinking wine, eating cheese and crackers and watching Parenthood after Jonah went to bed at night.  It was a pretty awesome weekend with Omi!

-Jonah’s big gummy smiles, which he offers pretty much any time we look at him and smile now. And they’re often accompanied by giggles, belly laughs or babbles.  It’s so sweet to see him interacting with, and enjoying, the world. 
-I'm eating dairy again!  And boy does it taste great.  Especially the cheese. 

All Aboard the Sleep (Training)Train!

Overall, Jonah’s sleep had been pretty good over the past couple months.   Most nights he got a decent stretch of uninterrupted sleep in after bedtime (between 6-9 hours) with another small stretch (1-2 hours) after one night nursing session.  And we got about 3-4 hours of total naptime in each day. 

And then, at about 18 weeks, we heard it.  In the distance. A faint whistle and the sound of “chug-chug-chug”.  It was the sleep training train.  

I had read a few books and talked to a few friends.  I knew some of the terminology (“extinction”, “graduated extinction”, “controlled crying”) and a few of the major players (Dr. Ferber, Dr. Weissbluth) but I wasn’t really sure we needed sleep training.  But slowly I was reminded of a few issues we did have with Jonah’s sleep.  

(1) Short, irregular naps.  And I had been pretty inconsistent in how I put him down. Sometimes I’d bounce him to sleep and then lay him in the crib. Other times I’d side-lie nurse him in bed and we’d fall asleep together.  Sometimes he’d catch naps in the carseat or stroller.  And for the most part, naps only lasted 40-50 minutes.

(2) Increasing night waking. Starting around 4 months, Jonah began waking more frequently at night, up to four times (four month sleep regression?).  Unsure of what to do, sometimes Jake would bounce him, sometimes I’d go in and nurse him, sometimes we’d do both and often it seemed like nothing really worked to get him back into a deep solid stretch of sleep.

(3) Non-existent self-soothing. This was the big one, which became more obvious as Jonah started waking more at night.  Because we almost always put Jonah down for naps/nighttime all the way asleep (via bouncing, nursing, rocking), he had almost zero self-soothing experience, so any time he woke and didn’t have us around to re-create that soothing environment, he’d cry.   

And finally, after several nights of 4-5 wakings, extended periods of crying, a recommendation from our pediatrician and the encouragement of a few friends, we decided maybe it was time. The sleep train was boarding.  And this time we’d packed our bags and were waiting at the station.  (I can sense that this metaphor might be a little overdone at this point.  I’ll stop.)

Sleep training in the Salter House. Not pictured: Project Runway. 

So here’s the nitty gritty.

First, I looked into the claims that sleep training (specifically the “cry it out” method) had negative psychological effects on infants.  My instinct told me it couldn’t be that bad; he cried all the time in the car for extended periods without intervention, would eventually fall asleep and, upon waking, be his normal, happy self.  But I wanted to be sure.  Some digging showed that there is actually clinical  research on these techniques.  The verdict?  Turns out, sleep training isn’t just safe, it’s effective (when done properly).   For a good summary of the research, see: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/the_kids/2013/07/clinical_lactation_jumps_on_the_dr_sears_bandwagon_to_say_sleep_training.html  (I recognize that this topic is quite controversial.  But my goal here is simply to share our experiences, not to debate the pros/cons of sleep training.  Certainly what works for one child won't work for all children.) 

So, we re-read a few sections of sleep books I had purchased last month (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child; Babywise; Moms on Call), talked to our pediatrician (who recommended Ferber’s method of graduated extinction, i.e. “cry it out” with parental soothing at pre-set intervals), talked to a few parent friends and made a plan: We’d start Friday night (so that we’d have two weekend days to catch up on any lost sleep) and we’d go all in with the extinction method (which means you don’t go in to soothe or check on them until morning, letting them cry until they fall asleep).  We decided on the extinction method (over graduated extinction) because we read that, while harder on parents, extinction worked more dependably, more quickly, there was less overall crying and parents were more likely to return to the method after a sleep setback (illness, travel, etc).

Night One:

Friday evening we went to a birthday party got to hang out with some good friends and their sweet kiddos.  We headed home a little before Jonah’s normal bedtime (7:30/7:45pm) and stuffed our bags with a few leftover beers and chocolate chip cookies. To help blunt the agony of what was about to happen. 

Jonah was super calm and easy during the pre-bed routine.  Sweet and babbly and smilely as ever. He had no idea what was about to hit him. It was torture. As I rocked him and nursed him, anxiety started creeping in; I could feel my heart-rate increase, imagining endless hours of my baby screaming all alone in his crib.  But I knew, in the long run, this would be for his good.  I nursed him extra long while Jake read “The Jesus Storybook Bible” and prayed.  Then, at about 8:15 when he seemed to be done nursing, and had drowsy, heavy eyelids (but was still awake), I placed him in his crib.  We kissed his forehead, told him we loved him and that we’d see him soon.  It was so strange putting him down without the extended bouncing, hovering and tiny calculated movements to keep him asleep. 

The first 5 minutes he babbled to himself. It was so sweet. And I had a flash of optimism: “Maybe he won’t cry at all!  Maybe he’ll talk himself to sleep!” Ha. 

Then he started crying. Jake and I went downstairs, turned the monitor OFF, turned the fans ON (to muffle the crying) and folded laundry while watching TV to keep distracted.  We could hear the screaming (although dampened by white noise).  I kept imagining his little body, sweating and writhing in anger. His tears, hot on his sweet baby cheeks.  Ugh.  Would this actually work? Was he too hot?  Should we have swaddled him in a onesie instead of footie pajamas? Should we have waited another month?  I just kept rolling boxers, folding t-shirts and watching Tim Gunn encourage designers to “make it work!”.  Jake reached over to hold my hand. 

Slowly I became less bothered by the screaming and more interested in the show and then, by 9:00pm, we couldn’t hear him anymore.  We didn’t dare turn on the monitor.  We didn’t want to jinx it. We just both pretended to not notice while we finished Project Runway (which Jake generously offered to watch with me, for solidarity sake).  But, he was asleep. After only about 40 minutes of crying.

And we didn’t hear him again until 5:45am. He started fussing and we decided to wait it out for a little bit.  After about 10 minutes he was back asleep.   And finally I went to get him to feed at 7:00am.  He was awake and quietly playing.  What!??? This had NEVER happened. 

So night one was a pretty big success.

After Night One:

Subsequent nights started off with less crying (25 minutes on night 2, 10 minutes on night 3 and less than 2 minutes on night 4), but he also started waking earlier (5:30am!).  5:30 is a pretty early start to the day (we often lay him down for his first nap before 8:00am, which feels pretty weird since there were plenty of days prior to parenthood where we’d still be sleeping at 8:00am), but we still counted it a success.

Naps, on the other hand, were not so successful.  We initially tried to “rip the Band-Aid off”, so to speak, and nap train concurrently with night training.  We had a few successful naps (minimal crying and sleep lasting longer than 35 minutes) but we also had quite a few days where he would cry all the way through at least one nap, leaving us frustrated and him exhausted.   After some research and prayer we decided to put nap training on hold and try to establish a good nighttime sleep schedule, consistent wake up time and consistent nap schedule before nap training.

It’s been about three weeks since our initial CIO experience and nighttime sleep is still consistently better.  Sometimes I’ll “accidentally” nurse him to sleep (never wake a sleeping baby, right?) which sets us back a little bit on the self-soothing but I’d say we’re still fairly committed to the basics of sleep training.

The Verdict

So, in terms of our original sleep challenges, I’d say sleep training has helped moderately to significantly with #2 (night wakings) and #3 (self soothing) and not at all with #1 (short naps).  Those flippin’ 40-minute naps, man.  They’re killing me.

Being a Mom: The First Two Weeks

I’ve been imagining how (and even if) I would write this blog post for a few months now.  It’s been an intimidating task for a couple reasons.  First, the more time that passes the less I feel as intimately connected to those first two weeks of motherhood. Which is ironic because at the time I thought my experience was inescapable.  And more significantly, those first two weeks of motherhood included perhaps the scariest and hardest moments of my life.   Moments that were dark and terrifying and ugly and that are still hard to talk about.  But perhaps that makes it even more important that I share them, both to continue my own healing but also maybe to reach into someone else’s dark, terrifying and ugly moments and offer some companionship.

Since we didn't take photos of my panic attack, my trip to the ER or my endless sobbing, here's a sweet picture of my sleeping nugget.  

The Hard Stuff

The first two days after Jonah’s birth were strange, but mostly lovely.  Despite the immense pressure and responsibility of this new little life, being in the hospital provided the feeling of a safety net; we had backup, and we used it.  We asked a ton of questions, requested several visits from the lactation consultants and we even sent Jonah to sleep in the nursery for a few stretches both nights so we could get some rest.

But returning home was a different story.  Enter: post-partum insomnia. (Followed closely by his cousins, post-partum anxiety and depression.)

Everyone is familiar with the “sleep when the baby sleeps” advice for early parenthood.  I was no exception. In fact, because I’ve always been pretty dependent on a full night’s sleep to function well, I was acutely aware of how important snagging any bits of available time for sleep would be for me.  This increased pressure, combined with my newly disrupted sleep schedule and the weighty burden of a helpless baby next to me, resulted in severe post-partum insomnia.  Even when I had time available for me to sleep, I would lie down and my mind would start ruminating, worrying over details and catastrophizing.  My brain would answer this flurry of anxiety with the command “Stop it! You MUST sleep.”  As it turns out, this pressure isn’t always that helpful.  While this pressure helps to give some mom's the much needed permission to rest, for others (ahem, me) it only increases the anxiety.  And do you know what your body does with anxiety?  It responds with heightened awareness, quickened heart rate, increased respiratory rate; none of which promote the relaxed state that is required to slip into sleep. 

This insomnia persisted for almost two full days.  No sleep.  Not even a couple minutes. Every missed nap just increased the pressure on the next nap.  And insomnia isn’t a flattering look on me.  I began crying uncontrollably, lost my appetite completely (I was below my pre-pregnancy weight 6 days post-partum; that’s not healthy); nothing felt familiar and nothing was comforting to me.  I didn’t have energy to do or feel anything.  I would look at my beautiful baby boy, this miracle, and feel sadness and resentment instead of joy and gratitude.

Finally in the middle of the second sleepless night something inside me gave way to the pressure and I completely unraveled.  I had a full-blown panic attack; I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t stop crying, I kept repeating “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” to Jake.  I imagined myself as a neglectful, resentful and incapable mother, unable to love her new baby and unable to hold up her end of the deal.  They would take Jonah away from me, they would lock me away in a mental hospital, (I’m not sure who “they” were), Jake would divorce me, I would lose my job. I would lose everything. That’s where my mind went: to the catastrophic end.  It was honestly the most terrifying experience of my life. I didn’t recognize anything or anyone around me.  I didn’t recognize myself.  And I prayed and prayed and prayed for God to rescue me. 

Jake ended up taking me to the emergency room.  We had to call Jake’s mom and grandmother back from their hotel at midnight to come watch Jonah (thank goodness they were in town; they were amazing).  We stayed there all night while they did tests and interviewed me and gave me Ativan that (finally) allowed me to sleep.  It was such a surreal experience; the freezing triage room with flickering overhead lights (that they mercifully allowed us to turn off), the hallway full of bewildered family members, the beeps of monitors and endless rotation of clinicians with their endless questions, the waiting.  I left the next morning with a few hours of sleep under my belt and a diagnosis of post-partum depression and anxiety. 

The next couple of weeks were hard, but with a lot of help, I finally felt like “I” emerged from the haze.  Not as “same old Erica”, but “Erica as a mom”.  Y’all, they tell you this, but I had no idea how true it is: having a baby changes your whole life. It doesn’t just change what you do, or when you sleep or how often you bathe.  It changes who you are.  It rocks your world.  (Or at least it did mine.) And it takes time to settled into a new rhythm and a new way of understanding yourself. 

What Helped

I don’t know how many new moms experience anything like this, but just in case someone out there recognizes a part of my story, I want to share what helped me transition out of the hopelessness and into something closer to joy. 

Sleep: Honestly, I think a lot of my post-partum issues were exacerbated, if not created, by lack of sleep.  (Although some might argue that the insomnia was actually caused by anxiety; it’s a chicken or egg question, I guess.)  After that first stretch of sleep in the ER, and another few hours at home from the lingering effects of the Ativan, I felt completely new.  Everything was clearer.  Life felt more manageable.  And from that moment on, we had a new game plan: do what you need to do to get a decent stretch of sleep each night.  We decided that I would try to pump a bottle’s worth of milk each day so that Jake could get up with Jonah for the midnight feeding and I could (theoretically) sleep uninterrupted from 10pm-2/3am. This worked great for us.  We were lucky that Jonah took to the bottle quickly and had no problem transitioning between the breast and bottle. 

Support System: I’m so lucky to have so many people in my life that love me.  Primarily, Jake. He was so amazing, especially the night of my panic attack.  He stuck with me, stayed calm, prayed, and seemed relatively unphased by the fact that he had to drive his sobbing wife to the ER at midnight with a newborn at home.  Despite feeling absolutely undone myself, I never felt crazy in his eyes.  And he never seemed to question that I would eventually emerge.   Also, having my mother in law and grandmother in law in town at the time was such a gift; I don’t know what we would have done if we had to take a three day old with us to the emergency room.  They stayed up all night with Jonah, and somehow remained chipper and helpful the next day, too. (Granny even weeded our garden and planted flowers!)  But, I gotta say, MVP of those first couple weeks was my mom.  Sometimes you just need your mama.  She was more than just a practical help (meals, cleaning, errands); she encouraged me, held my hand, wiped my tears and empowered me to trust my instincts.  She shared her own difficult seasons of motherhood, looked me in the eyes and said, mother to mother, “You can do this.”  And eventually I believed her. 

Daily Rituals: One of the most helpful things my mom did was encourage me to set a few daily rituals that would help me get into a rhythm that felt comfortable and predictable.  Here are a few of her specific recommendations that really helped.

(a)     Decide to wake up: At some point each morning, I needed to stop expecting to get any more sleep and just decide to start the day.  If I got a nap later, great, but if not at least I could feel more awake.  So at some point each morning I would change into clean clothes (still PJs, but at least they were clean PJs), wash my face, put in my contacts and open the blinds. 

(b)  Go out: Knowing my personality, my mom also recommended that I get out of the house at least once each day, if even for a walk around the block.  Most people tell new moms to rest and stay inside and be lazy, but this made me feel more antsy and disoriented.  I needed to breathe fresh air and interact with regular people. The first few outings were alone or with Jake (while my mom stayed home with Jonah): a pedicure and a dinner out.  But slowly I became more confident in taking Jonah out and we would run small errands (I think I went to Buy Buy Baby two dozen separate times those first few weeks).

(c)  This, too, shall pass: It's trite, but true. With time, things get easier.  We are more resilient than we give ourselves credit for.

Grace: I’m still learning this one.  As a Christian, I believe that we don’t (and can’t) earn our salvation through our performance, but that it is offered to us as a free gift because of Christ’s sacrifice. Life everlasting in perfect communion with my Maker in spite of my selfishness, pride, idolatry.  This is grace.  As it turns out, I like to earn things.  I don’t like to be indebted to others.  It makes me uncomfortable.  Well guess what?  All of life—and certainly all of motherhood—is a lesson in grace.  The devotion of my husband.  The generosity of my family.  The selflessness of my mother.  The life of that beautiful baby boy. All grace.  I earned none of it.  I deserve none of it.  And yet. It is mine because I am loved.  This is something to celebrate.  And as I learn to accept grace, I am also learning to offer it; offer it to my husband, to my baby, and, importantly, to myself. Motherhood, for the first time in my life, truly pushed me to the end of myself and the end my strength.  I could do nothing to make it better.   I was no longer in control (nor could I pretend to be).   And in my weakness, God proved Himself strong.   I have a feeling this will be the refrain of motherhood.  

“Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be ‘til I die.”