twinutero

Sleeping through the night. How many times have I said that phrase, or some version of it?

“They’ll soon start sleeping through the night.”
“Things will be easier when they sleep through the night.”
“Does that count as sleeping through the night?”
“Really… [insert name of unrelated child] slept through the night at two weeks?”

Our kids do not sleep through the night. Jon and Alex, now fifteen months old, have never slept through the night. Thomas, at two and a half, currently sleeps through every second night, although he has been much better and much worse in the past.

Are we cursed by the sleep gods? Did we miss a crucial session of our prenatal class? Are they teething, getting a cold, having nightmares, too hungry, too full, afraid of the dark, in need of a BM? We have thought of every reason, every excuse. But the bottom line is that some kids, our kids, have to learn to sleep peacefully through the night, and that takes a lot of conviction, patience, and energy.

Thomas slept quite well at three months old. My journal entry from that time describes how onerous it felt to get up once and sometimes twice at night with him. If only I knew what was in store. Between three and four months old, he started waking up four, five even six times a night – every night. Our lactation consultant provided the most plausible explanation. She said that this is an age of rapid cognitive development and that babies would much rather explore their world than eat (they can’t see much while breastfeeding!). Given the choice, babies will therefore feed more at night when stimulation is low. If they wake up and get fed, they will continue to wake up to feed.

We tried all sorts of things: nursing during the day in a quiet, dimly lit room; pumping to increase my milk supply; introducing solid foods at about four months; even putting him to bed with a shirt I had worn during the day. None of it worked. He continued to wake every one to two hours until he was eight months old, and we were almost dysfunctional for lack of sleep.

We had heard of ferberizing and were really, really hoping that Thomas would miraculously start sleeping before we had to resort to letting him cry. He didn’t. We bought Ferber’s book (Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems) and, being research-y kind of people, found that it helped to read the rationale and studies behind ferberizing before giving it a try.

It was still awful. Counter-intuitive, heart-wrenching and just plain awful. But it was also awful to go through each day in a crabby, sleep-deprived daze – and ferberizing did work. After about a week, Thomas was regularly sleeping ten hours a night. We would put him to bed with an empty bottle (he never liked soothers) and his special blanket, and he would sleep. And we would sleep. And everyone was much happier.

It didn’t last. When he started daycare, and when he got a cold, and when my husband left for business travel, and after any other large or small disruption, he would start waking again. We were persistent, partly because his twin brothers were on their way, and we couldn’t imagine soothing three wakeful babies. We were also persistent because we could be. Although both my husband and I were tired, we had only one child so we could take turns at night, and take naps during the day.

Thomas was sleeping consistently well by the time Jon and Alex arrived, and we thought we had the sleep thing figured out. No messing around. The twins would sleep through the night by three months. Easy.

Ha.