Parenting from Scratch

I think you can see why Tuesday is my favorite day of the work week.

I’ll spare you the details, but this week I’ve either had some sort of stomach bug, or I have managed to give myself a touch of food poisoning. Twice.

Today I worked from home, which means I was glued to the couch pretty much all day. Two laptops open, a Gatorade (gag) by my side. It got me reminiscing, though, about this time last year. Sadie was just over a month old, and we spent all day every day on the couch, from what I can remember.

Other than the stomach yuckies, it’s been relatively uneventful around here. Sadie is learning new words all the time–we’ve got “hey,” “hi,” “bye, bye,” “dog,” “woof, woof,” “kitty” (sort of), “eye,” “ball” (but not eyeball), and probably a couple more I’m not thinking of. Sadie is increasingly demanding about going outside. She had two stroller rides today, which has us hopeful that Sadie will love (she’d better) the bike trailer that just came for her today.

It might rain on Sunday, but if not, we’ll be taking her for a spin!

Oh, and don’t worry, she’s also got one of these:

Now, here’s hoping her mama can find the energy to pedal (not to mention her padded bike shorts!).

As you know, we’ve been back-and-forth some (okay, a TON) over Sadie’s sleep. Well, I am happy to report that things are still going swimmingly. Even in the face of some major teething. Sure, there are nights like Tuesday where she wakes up a few times for a little cuddle and some teething tablets. But more often that not, Sadie goes to bed between 6:15 and 6:45 pm, wakes up to nurse around 5:30, and is up for the day around 6:30. AWESOME.

One of the blogs I follow is API Speaks, which is the blog of Attachment Parenting International. I would consider what Trevor and I are doing, for the most part, to be Attachment Parenting. There was a post recently, however, that I think highlights a need in many parenting styles, and that’s flexibility (something my Aunt Margie would say is NOT my strong suit). I hope you’ll go on over and read the post and that you’ll chime in on the discussion over there, over here, or both.

Here’s my response:

I think there’s a gray area that doesn’t get talked about enough in Attachment Parenting conversations. And that is what to do with your older baby who actually DOES need more sleep than she’s getting. There’s so much talk about how we shouldn’t “sleep train” our babies in order to satisfy our own needs for sleep. And I agree with that. I signed on to parenting and all the nitty-gritty that comes with it. I also agree that infants, especially those who are breastfed (and of those, especially ones with working-out-of-the-home mothers), may need to wake up often to eat throughout the night.

But a 12+-month-old very well may have different needs. A toddler who sleeps no longer than two or three hours at a time has a problem. It’s called sleep deprivation. Think about how hard it is to go about our daily lives on low-quality sleep. Sometimes we’re groggy, we’re grouchy, we’re sloppy. Most of the time, it’s not that big a deal. You can grocery shop on auto-pilot. But what if you’re learning to walk? And what if you’re learning your first language? These are some TOUGH things to learn, and being groggy, grouchy and sloppy HAS to make it harder.

I believe that the intensive nighttime parenting we did for our daughter was the right thing to do. We co-slept when it made sense; we never left her to cry. I believe it laid a strong foundation for her to know that sleep is good and safe, and that her parents are nearby when she needs them. I also believe, however, that the time had come for a change. Sure, I’ll admit the prospect of getting to sleep through the night sounded awesome for myself. It also felt like something my daughter truly needed. More than she needed hourly check-ins with her dad or me.

I’ve been practicing Attachment Parenting in all the ways that it fits my family since before my daughter was born. And it’s a great fit for us. But I think there’s a danger in black-and-white-only thinking: you either go along with your baby’s sleep routine, no matter the consequences; or you leave her to cry for hours at a time causing her to lose her trust in you completely. Again, I completely agree that sleep training is potentially harmful to a newborn or infant. And that eventually, pretty much everybody learns to sleep through the night, one way or another. But why isn’t anybody talking about the in-between?

After recognizing that my daughter’s needs had shifted—from needing to nurse frequently through the night to needing a full night’s sleep—I was able to see that what we’d created was a habit of waking that was no longer healthy for her. I also realized what I already knew—she’s older now and CAN understand the concept of lying herself back down and going to sleep.

You say:

“Baby trainers often state that it is important for an infant learn to pacify itself, but an infant, like stated before, has no way of understanding that they are supposed to comfort themselves. They have no tools to do that. Leaving an infant to himself will in fact do just that; it will teach him to take his emotions and, instead of expressing them, it will teach the infant to internalize all that anger need and fear. The infant will come to an understanding that their wants/needs will not be met and that they must fend for themselves. When this happens in an infant, many people believe that the sleep battle has been won and that the parent has been victorious. What they do not understand is that they may have won the battle but they have lost the war for trust.”

But, again, what about toddlers? Who haven’t “naturally” found their way to getting a healthy night’s sleep? I honestly believe that an AP-raised toddler is capable of putting herself to sleep—and staying asleep. And I do believe that for some, like my daughter, the presence of a parent throughout the night can become an interference. A hindrance to learning to sleep well.

Why does it have to be all battles and wars? I’m not saying what we did would work for anybody else, but it is disheartening to now feel like we’re not “AP” enough because we decided that our daughter was old enough to put herself to sleep with a minimal (no more than five minutes) amount of (non-distressed) crying. We tried it. It worked. And I am 100 percent confident that my daughter gets the sleep she needs to fuel her days of learning and growing and that she continues to trust in her parents.

I guess what I’m saying is, there’s a gray area, and we’re sleeping in it.

And here’s what I added a few minutes later:

Oh, and what I left out (can you believe it?) is this: had we not been willing to put our AP-ness aside and given our daughter five minutes to figure out how to put herself to sleep, who knows how much longer she’d have gone without getting a healthy amount of sleep?

I can’t believe I almost missed THIS. Somebody’s off the hook for Mother’s Day this year! Best present ever.

Okay, so remember how they always tell you never to say never?

Right. So I kept on reading about babies and sleep, trying to figure out what the best thing for Sadie truly was. And some of the conclusions I’d come to were these: Sadie no longer really needed to wake up every hour. No need at all, especially since she’d night weaned so easily. Sadie was waking up all the time out of habit. Yes, I’d gotten out of the night-duty rotation and had been getting sleep myself. And maybe that’s what helped me see things a little more clearly. Trevor had taken my place, but Sadie was still waking up, hour after hour, and she was still having some level of interaction with one of us.

At one year of age, it was no longer working for her. For any of us. I borrowed a book from a friend (one that I honestly thought I’d Never read, because it was one of those CIO books, and I’d Never let Sadie cry for a minute longer than she had to), and I read a little bit about the author and his ideas online, and I came away with this conclusion: Sadie’s sleep was no longer healthy for her, and her getting uninterrupted sleep for more than two or three hours at a stretch was much more important at this point than her getting regular visits from one of us throughout the night. I started thinking about how hard it’s been for Trevor and me to get by on lousy sleep. And I realized how hard it probably was for Sadie–she’s been learning to walk and learning her very first language. I can’t imagine doing all of that in a sleep-deprived state. I do believe that, during her infancy, she had a true need for all the night wakings–light sleep may protect against SIDS, and she definitely needed to nurse extra at night once I started working.

So here’s what I decided to try. Last Monday I fed Sadie dinner early and went straight into her bedtime routine. I nursed her and then put her in her crib. I told her I lived her and goodnight, and I left the room. I set the timer on my phone for five minutes. She fussed for exactly five minutes, and then she stopped. A couple of minutes later, she started fussing again, so I reset my timer. After four minutes, she was quiet. And I didn’t hear from her again for three hours. At that waking, I picked her up, bounced her, and then put her back. She fussed for ten minutes, I went back in. She fussed ten more minutes, and then was quiet. She slept for four hours. The rest of the night had a few more wakings, but she required very little interference.

Now, I know I keep saying “fussing” instead of “crying,” and that’s because it’s really been more of fussing than crying. When it’s crying, I intervene. Maybe she needs a diaper change. Or some teething tablets.

Aside from last Tuesday night, Sadies sleep has gotten better and better. She slept 11 hours without making a peep the other night. The past two nights Sadie has voluntarily laid down in her crib and not fussed or cried a second until the morning.

We are ALL feeling the difference! I’m not sorry we didn’t do this sooner…I don’t suspect I’d do it before a year if Sadie gets a sibling. But considering how EASY this has all been, and how not traumatic, and how successful (okay, so it’s only been one week, but she is Sleeping Through the Night while cutting four teeth at once, and that’s bug stuff in our book!), I feel very good about the decision.

So now you’re free to “I told you so” me or to hate my guts.

But isn’t she a doll?

Last Monday, I shared a post with you about how we’ve adopted an online menu planning service as our method of improving the healthiness of our dinners. Now, I’d like to show you another tool that I use to help us eat the most nutritious food we can.

LocallyGrown.net is essentially an online farmers market; and, as you can see from the map, there are loads of them across the U.S. (and so far one in Canada). We use the Little Rock Locally Grown Food Club, which is run by the Arkansas Sustainability Network. From our Food Club website:

The Local Food Club connects members with the local food system. Members have a weekly opportunity to interact with local farmers as a participant in our local farm buying cooperative. Members get an inside look at what’s available locally and can get to know their local farmers through the buying cooperative.

Our buying cooperative, in conjunction with other fantastic local food programs, can help stock your kitchen year-round. Healthy, accessible local food and viable local farming operations are cornerstones of a more sustainable community.

How it works

Unlike other co-ops, buying clubs, or CSAs where everyone gets the same box of stuff (and you don’t know what you’re getting until you get it), with Locally Grown you get to order what you want, in the quantities that you want, from the farms that you want.

• First, sign up for an account by clicking on “Your Account” at the top of the page. Once you have an account you will be notified each Sunday when the market opens and you’ll be able to place your orders until Tuesday evening.

• Order conveniently from the comfort of your home computer by visiting the market page for the weeks offerings; or if need be by responding directly to the e-mail, or by phone. You will receive an email confirmation of your order.

• Know what you are purchasing with more information about the vendors, their practices and their products on our grower page.

So here’s my entire process:

• Every Wednesday, I get my email newsletter from The Six O’Clock Scramble.
• The following Sunday, I sit down with the newsletter and determine which meals I want to make in the coming week and create a PDF of the recipes and corresponding grocery list.
• Sunday evening, I get an email from ASN telling me the Food Club is open for ordering.
• I go to the website and compare the grocery list from my Scramble menu, and I order everything I can on my grocery list from the Food Club*.
• I also browse the other available foods to see if there’s anything else I want for the week. I sometimes like some zucchini bread; I always get our honey from there (sometimes I can get honey from the next neighborhood over); and we’ve even ordered an apple tree sapling, three blueberry bushes, and various vegetable seedlings for the garden.
• I “check-out” pretty much like any other online shopping experience, except that I don’t pay right then.
• I get an email with the contents of my order, and I’m done with thinking about that part of my meal planning for the next week.
• That following Saturday, I go down to the pickup site, which happens to only be about three miles away from our house.
• Volunteers are there to help gather orders; and after going a number of times, it’s kind of become a social event for Sadie and me.
• The next day is grocery store day, and I buy everything else I couldn’t get through the Food Club.

*Sometimes, if, say, there aren’t any chicken breasts being sold (rather than the whole chicken), and I had a meal using chicken in mind from the Scramble, I’ll either swap out that  meal or plan to substitute tofu from the grocery store.

I’ve been using the Food Club for a good few months now, but I really can’t wait for the spring and then summer crops to really be coming on. I’ve got big plans for canning jams this year instead of freezing them. And I might even try making and canning tomato paste. I’ll still visit the farmers market now and then, but it really is convenient to be able to order in advance with my meal plan in hand. There are some people who can just peruse the farmers market and pick up a little of this and a lot of that and manage to eat it all before it goes bad, just tossing together meals from whatever they bough. I am not one of those people, so I’m really glad I’ve finally come up with this system!

If you have a local food club (check the map and list on LocallyGrown.net), I highly recommend checking it out.

The trouble is, we’re not even winning this half. For those of you who are not parents, let me go on the record saying that making decisions that affect your child can be really, really tough. Sometimes you think you’ve made up your mind only to find that you’re not as resolved as you thought. Yes, I am STILL hung up on Sadie’s sleep.

Monday night was awesome. If your name was Brooke or you had fur. For Sadie and Trevor, it meant waking up about every hour. After I got so mad at Trevor for interrupting what I had (at the last minute) decided was THE PLAN for teaching Sadie to fall asleep on her own, he turned around and gave me my first full night’s sleep in over a year. Not too shabby. Now, before you go all Poor Trevor on me, he reported that several of the times Sadie woke up, he was able to get her back to sleep before she even stood up in the crib (which makes me think she wasn’t fully awake to begin with, but who knows).

If you haven’t picked up on this yet, I am a serious research junkie. And this has created some problems as a new parent. One minute I’m all, let’s do this sleep coaching method. Then I’m saying, maybe crying isn’t the worst thing ever. Then I get a full night’s rest and go back to my trusty Dr. Sears and think maybe Trevor’s right… maybe if he just works with her on getting through the night without nursing, her stretches of sleep will get longer. Because what if I’ve been focusing on the wrong thing altogether? What if, because of my increasingly desperate sleep deprivation, I’m stressing about getting Sadie to fall asleep on her own, when maybe she’s just not ready for it. What if what actually needs to change is how frequently she’s waking up in the first place.

Here’s the good news: even with the not-so-awesome nights, Sadie is still thriving. She is happy, she is fun, she is growing and doing all sorts of cool things. So my major stress is not that Sadie’s not getting what she needs. My major stress is that I am not, and that I’m starting to burn out. There, I said it.

I can haz crunchee granola barz?

In reading and in talking to other moms, I suspect a major cause of Sadie’s night waking is the habit of waking up and nursing all the time. I absolutely wouldn’t undo all of the night nursing she and I did, but I do believe, at her age, it’s a habit and not a need. She eats plenty of solid food during the day, she still nurses on demand when we’re together, and she still gets pumped breastmilk in a cup. I’ve been halfway night weaning Sadie for about a week now, and it’s pretty much happened without effort. For several nights I limited her nursing to before 11:00pm and after 6:00am. Monday night she didn’t nurse after her 7:00 bedtime session. Yes, she has definitely continued to wake up A TON those nights, but she’s not demanding to be fed by any means. She has been settled back to sleep relatively easily.

So here’s where we are now: I do Sadie’s post-dinner getting ready for bed routine. Trevor does bedtime story and puts her to sleep. Trevor sleeps in her room with her and gets up to settle her back to sleep throughout the night. Brooke sleeps soundly in her bed, catching up on a year’s missed sleep (if only that were actually possible). The hope is this: as Sadie realizes that nursing isn’t part of the nighttime equation, she will gradually begin to wake up less frequently, allowing Trevor to move back into our bed.

Honestly, I can’t believe he’s signed up for this. Don’t get me wrong, it’s AWESOME. Let’s just hope it lasts and that it works.

Anybody have any thoughts or suggestions? Success or horror stories? Am I the only mom to flip-flop on decisions like this on a daily (or hourly) basis? Parents of fariy-tale babies who have always slept perfectly need not apply .

So it turns out I’m not always an effective communicator. This is a big problem when you are trying to raise a child with someone else.

Take last night, for example. I’d come to the conclusion that Sadie was ready to learn to fall asleep on her own. I’ve looked into some “sleep coaching” strategies, and I thought giving the Sleep Lady Shuffle a go would be a good plan (admittedly, this was my plan B until about 5:00 this evening). Sadie is night weaned for the most part, only nursing at bedtime and in the morning. Her receptive vocabulary is wide enough that she understands simple requests, like “put your head down.” And she’s had a small handful of instances where she has gone back to sleep on her own. At first. I wasn’t so sure about the Sleep Shuffle, but upon further consideration, I think that it is still in line with the parenting we’ve beenn providing Sadie. Yes, she would likely cry some. But, no, she would never cry alone. I would continue to be responsive to her throughout the night, just in a way that encourages her to learn to put and keep herself to sleep.

Okay, so last night. I talked to Trevor about what I was thinking. I explained the two scenarios. An added bonus was that the Sleep Shuffle was a one-man gig, so he was of the hook for a while (he’s definitely been pulling his weight in terms of nighttime parenting lately). I asked Trevor for his input, but he said he didn’t have any.

So we did Sadie’s bedtime routine, and Trevor left me to it. Sadie was doing better than I thought she would. She stood up a lot and fussed some, but she would lie back down when I would pat the mattress. She had just started to actually cry, and I was hugging on her to calm her down, when Trevor came in and insisted he take over. Effectively negating all of the time I had just spent in there with her. Turns out, Trevor did have some input. Frustration on my end. Trevor did get her to sleep quickly, but what she learned in the process was that Momma can’t do bedtime, and if she waits/fusses/cries long enough, Daddy will come take over. Not exactly what I was aiming for.

Lesson learned: be much more specific with Trevor with any plans involving changes to Sadie’s routine. Talk about a communication breakdown!

So here’s a cute picture of Sadie to counteract all the negativity of this post. Sadie had a lot of fun playing with her cousins on Sunday.