I'm so afraid to jinx it, but The Sleep Thing is improving. WeeC is 17.5 mos (thiiiiiis close to a year and a half) and after some tough love, we are down to one wake-up per night, which often she sorts out herself.
To put perspective on The Sleep Thing (it has earned capitalization; and expletives but I'm being good), my cycle of sleep deprivation began when I was about 6 month pregnant. So about September 2008, I started to suffer sleeplessness. Hip pain, yes, but also just this obnoxious insomnia that kept me up for four hours a night. January took it's time coming and finally WeeC was born. Rejoicing followed; long long nights followed. C would not sleep when not on us. No colic, no reflux, just f'in annoying. One of us had to be holding the baby, and awake!, at all times or she would not sleep. She once went 10 hours without sleep, which for a 3 week old is not natural. She did not sleep for more than 2 hours (on us, of course) until she was 4 months old. That brings us to May 2009.
Eventually she slept a lil more. And a lil more. She learned to sleep in her crib. She extended her cycle to three hours. And that's where we were stuck. A screaming bloody murder wake-up every three hours of her 12 hours "night" (down at 6 pm, up at 9, 12, and 3, awake at 6 am). Some nights, I'd stay up until the midnight wake up so that I could count on only one jarring wake-up a night. But that meant about 5 hours of sleep a night.
Maybe. If BigE didn't wake up and crawl into bed. If the dog didn't have a night-spaz. If the fire alarm batteries didn't die. If there wasn't some wacky occurrence in the park calling the cops out to my corner. On some nights, I would count as many as 8 - 12 wake-ups between 9 pm and 6 am. Really. I swear I am not exaggerating. I'd wake up in the morning (though it's hard to say I'd slept) and I'd recount the night to myself and just want to sob.
This continued for a long time. All summer, fall, and all winter 2009. I went back to work and it continued on. It's June 2010 and I think I spent the better part of the last 20 months critically sleep-deprived.
Sometime in spring 2010, we decided we were done. We went cold-turkey. I guess it was cry-it-out. I didn't read a book; I didn't hire a sleep consultant. I put her safely to bed, drank a scotch, put in ear-plugs, and refused to go to her.
If you've been there, you know this is very hard to do. Babies crying affect me viscerally. Hell, I cried the whole way through "Bolt The Wonder Dog" because my hormones are so out of whack. WeeC's crying made me crazy. I'd cry. I'd get angry. At myself, at Bill, at her. Please for the love of Pete, sleep already!
It wasn't elegantly done but eventually we saw progress. We noted that she was often cheerier on the mornings when we'd not gone to her. She was learning to sort out her sleep habits. I started to sleep more deeply, to dream again, to feel less like I was running on fumes. A few sparks of creative spirit came back. I thought about reading a book again. Bill and I have gone out on a few dates. We are slowly feeling human and hopeful again.
All along, I've said I can't cope with this. How can you untangle sleep problems when you can't think straight from lack of sleep? But looking back, we were coping, after a fashion. In a short-tempered, snapping over trivial crap, eating badly, paying bills late sort of fashion. But we navigated a whole year of school, work, and life... and I am really and truly hoping we have established a new 'normal'. If I have been a space-cadet, unseemingly distant or aloof, ditzy, quick to anger, tired, depressing,... I'm really hoping we'll be moving on from that now.
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