Friday, January 16, 2015

Sleep baby sleep - Getting and keeping your highly sensitive child asleep

Before I had a baby I never imagined that sleep would be the largest issue in our newly found family. Sleep for us and for our son. Our little highly sensitive son only really slept well the first week after birth. After that it was and is incredible hard to get him to sleep and keep him asleep. An osteopath, we visited, said once about him: "It's as if someone put the light on and forgot to install a switch off button."
Since he's born he's incredible alert. His eyes constantly look around and take in everything. I remember when he was just a couple of weeks old. I would see his eyes following everything in a room while other babies would just stare at the ceiling. He takes in so much of his surroundings that it's incredible hard for him to switch off.
Until this day (19 months) he never fall asleep without our assistance and he never slept through the night. The best he ever slept was waking up two times in a twelve hour stretch. This happened twice since he's born. Generally he wakes up every two to three hours a night and needs rocking or breastfeeding to go back to sleep. When he was around three months he went through a period of waking up every hour at night. This lasted a couple of months. 
Contrary to other babies my son would never fall asleep in his pram or in the car. He rather cried hysterically in both.
In his first weeks he would only sleep at my breast during the day. Sometimes when I was lucky I could detach him and hold him in my arms. The moment I would put him down in his bed his eyes would fly open. It felt like I was constantly trapped on the couch with him.
He was also a short sleeper. A nap hardly ever lasted longer than 30 minutes. After he became 14 months and switched to one nap a day that luckily changed and he's sleeping now around 90 minutes in one go.

Here are a couple of things that helped us to get him to sleep. We are not comfortable to sleep-train him, which means most of the time letting him cry to sleep. So these are very gentle, natural methods.

1. Movement
Our son needed movement to fall asleep. Not just a little rocking. No, me walking up and down the room while rocking him quite hard.
Luckily soon after his birth we discovered that he would sleep incredible well in a carrier, strapped to my body. I often had a walk with him, fresh air and nature for me, while he slept in the carrier.
It never worked though to make him sleep in the carrier and then put him into a bed. He would immediately recognise the difference and wake up. If i didn't feel like walking around with him in the carrier, I would rock him to sleep and he would sleep on my body. Most of the times I would also sleep. This was a great way for me to recover from the many night wakings.
Until the age of one it was impossible to put him into a bed for his day naps. He would wake up immediately. So he always slept on me.
When he was six months we discovered that he would sleep in a baby hammock during the day. It swings and because of the shape he felt very cozy in this. We had a Nonomo, this product really saved my life. Finally I could use his nap time to do other things.


2. Blocking out stimulation

HSPs are very sensitive to any stimulation. In order to help our son fall asleep we try to block out all stimuli. We bought very dark curtains for our bedroom. No music, no TV before bedtime.
A carrier is great when you are out and about. It provides a save space without stimuli close to mama or papa. When we rock him to sleep during the day we cover him with a blanket with a hood that blocks his eyesight (we used Trendy Wrapping by Snoozebaby). We took this item everywhere with us.



3. Bed-sharing
Bed-sharing is not for everyone but for me it was just the most obvious way I should sleep with my baby. It makes breastfeeding at night much easier and it allows me to drift back the sleep almost
instantly after my son wakes up and starts to feed at night. Initially we had bought a co-sleeper but somehow our son knew the difference between lying in the co-sleeper and lying directly next to me very well. So he didn't settle in the co-slepper and he ended up in our bed. In the first four weeks he was sleeping on my belly, after that he slept snuggled up next to me. No he's claiming his own space but still touching me with his hands. As a result of bed-sharing our sleep became totally synchronised. Sometimes I wake up minutes before he wakes up. I love to sleep next to him, knowing he's all cozy and save. I feel though bed-sharing is not a short term activity. We try from time to time to have him sleep in his own bed but usually by the middle of the night he makes his way into ours. It might take some years before he voluntarily wants to move to his own bed.

4. Sleep routine
Now, we are not strict routine followers but we have a nap and night sleep routine and I believe that helps him to settle into sleep time. For his naps we always sing the same song to him. For his night time our routine has changed. When he was a small baby I would give him a bath, do baby massage and then breastfeed him to sleep. After some time I realised that a bath rather excited him, so I dropped that. At some point he was also to active for baby massage. These days I spend some time with him in the bathroom before sleep time, changing him, singing a night song, burning lavender essential oil, just quiet time to come down from the day. After that I breastfeed him in the dark bedroom and wait until he's asleep.
He's usually going at a similar time to bed and down for his nap. There's a window though depending on summer and winter and his tiredness. I don't believe you have to put your child to bed at the exact same time each day.

5. Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding makes babies sleepy and it's a great tool to get a baby to sleep. When I breastfeed him at night he's back to sleep in two minutes, when I rock him it takes much longer. At the same time though breastfed babies tend to wake up more often at night as they are used to drink at night. So it's a double sword. For me breastfeeding has been a great tool to bond with my HSC and to give him a save space. I don't really mind the downside of frequent night wakings.

Still with all our efforts our son wakes up very frequently at night. At times I was tired myself, I didn't know how I will manage during the day.
Here are some things that helped me as a mother through the tough periods of sleep deprivation:

1. Making sleep a priority
At some point I prioritised my sleep over everything else (but my babies wellbeing). So I slept whenever I could. I slept during the day with my baby. I still do actually. I went early to bed. I took any opportunity to get a nap.

2. Sharing responsibilities 
It seems hard to share if you are breastfeeding and that's the best way to get your baby back to sleep at night. You can't just say to your husband "Now, you give your breasts." But if I had no energy I would give our son to my husband and he would carry him to sleep.

2. Eating healthy
If you don't get enough sleep, you especially need to make sure that you have enough healthy meals and snacks to keep your energy running.

3. Going outside  
For me it always helped to get a bit of fresh air and sunlight when I was really tired.

5. Avoiding parent guilt
When my son was little I paid too much attention to general baby advise and stories of others. Why were all other babies sleeping well but mine not? Was it my own fault that my baby didn't sleep well? Is it because I never taught him to self-settle? Am I creating bad habits by rocking or breastfeeding him to sleep? Everyone else seemed to find it normal to let their child cry to sleep, while I find it cruel. Luckily my husband is from Turkey, a country where rocking babies to sleep is normal and letting them cry to sleep is not that common. And (contrary to popular western advise) they all learn to sleep by themselves and sleep through the night. It just takes longer than in western cultures. So I ditched all advise, accepted that I had a difficult sleeper and just followed my instinct.

At 19 months my son is still far away from sleeping without assistance but I am positive that he will one day. Until then I am cherishing the moments we have together, there's nothing more beautiful than holding a sleeping child. I know, him sleeping next to me will be the most beautiful memories of my time with him.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks so much for sharing this! My daughter is 2.5 and was very similar, and we also stuck with cosleeping and baby wearing. She still rarely sleeps through the night but we know she will one day. She has had night terrors and nightmares and cries if told to go to sleep on her own, and we don't think it's worth it to put her through that. We're all functioning fine with our family bed, in fact, we love the closeness.

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