"Normal"

When I first had trouble conceiving I longed for a complete statistical map. For couples exactly like us, what percent conceive on their own in the next year? What percent conceive on IUI #1? IUI#2? What percent go on to IVF? What percent ditch conception and embrace adoption? What percent end up still childless three years out? And what percent of them are OK with that? I felt so unmoored, so befogged. I craved this birds-eye view to calibrate my hopes by.

I now feel the same way about baby sleep. DJ is now 5 months old. He goes to bed consistently at seven, after a routine of bath -> boob -> sleepsack -> books -> bouncing. He'll wake up around 7:30 with this plaintive why-the-hell-am-I-awake wail, and usually again at 8. We bounce him back to sleep. By 8 he'll settle in for his "long" stretch until sometime between midnight and 2. Then he wakes up every hour or two until he's up for the day around 6. It works out to 4-6 wakings between 7 pm and 6 am. I try bouncing him back to sleep, but I quickly move to nursing him if bouncing doesn't work.

I've generally been doing the night shift because J has terrible night vision and he can't ever go back to sleep if he attends to the baby between 2 and 4 am. Since I can usually go right back to sleep after a little nursing, it's not a benefit for me to have J attend to DJ if I'm woken up anyway. So instead, J often takes the baby at 6 am and I sack out for another hour or two and J does most of the early evening wakings.

That's been reasonably sustainable for a few months, but it's really, really wearing on me, and I'm eager to get it down to two or fewer proper night-feedings. I'm having a hard time concentrating and making decisions. I'm forgetful. Emotionally, I feel fine most of the time, but I'm much more easily frustrated and fail to do things that I know will make me feel good, like playing instruments, exercising, and calling friends and family. I'm also increasingly feeling a sense of powerless dread in the evenings, knowing that I'm going to be repeatedly awoken.

I get the sense that DJ's sleep is "not normal" and I can and should aspire for better. At his four-month appointment, his pediatrician said that he is capable of sleeping through the night, that he wakes because he is now a "trained night feeder," and that we should sleep-train him. He also said he only needs to eat every four hours, which will help him sleep through the night. At that point he was eating every two. We quickly found that he could go three hours, but no more than that. We've also found recently that he'll suck down 6 oz from a bottle (without spitting up), but when I pump both sides at what would be a feeding time, I only get 3 oz total. He's clearly getting enough milk in a 24-hour day, but maybe not as much as he'd like at any one time, given his 95th-percentile size and my a-cup bosom. We're ramping up on solids.

We're going to try to wean him from the bouncing and and coach him to go to sleep more independently, which should reduce night-wakings. However, he hasn't pooped in ten days, and he's been waking more and having more trouble settling back down. So it seems like this is not a "normal" time, and sleep-training is bound to fail until things get back to "normal."

But last night I realized that there's always going to be SOMETHING going on. He's rapidly growing and developing, seasons change, teeth emerge, we travel, people visit, he'll get an ear infection or something one of these days. His daytime schedule has gotten more regular, but it too is constantly evolving. Like with struggling to conceiving, there is no "normal." And there is no way around that bottomless chasm between sound general principles and complex individual situations. We're on our own and we need to just pick a direction and go that way.

But I'm happy to say I'm not on MY own; J has become a true partner in this. For a while, I was the only one reading and fretting about sleep & scheduling issues. J was of the mind to let things roll. When I would say, "Maybe we should do X." J took it to mean, "Amy wants to be in charge of sleep and is telling me to do X." I felt all alone and frustrated, which J didn't understand because he thought he was being totally supportive. We finally figured out our disconnect. I marked the relevant parts of the baby sleep books, J read them, and now he and I deliberate as a team. I definitely want to keep THAT is normal!