Weaning

I weaned 16 days ago, but I'm still making milk.  That's absurd.  Just saying.  That's incredible based on everything we've been told about breastfeeding in these pro-breastfeeding venues.  But, it's absurd, because every misstep was agony for everyone.  I analyzed what I could have done wrong, and just beat myself up for it.  But, in reality, we just produce what we produce, and that's the end of story.  This whole producing milk for 3 weeks after just affirms a thought I had about too much pro-breastfeeding propaganda.  But, it has to be that way, because it takes a convinced woman a lot of dedication to successfully breastfeed against all odds. 

We've been doing good.  Her mood has definitely evened out to where I know when she's upset over life versus boob.  But, I can't get her to sleep with a bottle in the bed no matter what I do or how long I wait.  She'll sleep for me in the stroller or in the car.  More work to be done. 

Too cute a baby, though.  Our relationship post weaning is much better.

Long-Term Side-Lying Night Nursing

I belong to a very distraught and tired segment of the nursing mother population: the long-term, side-lying, night nursing group.   Code word: Human Pacifier.  Let me tell you a little bit about how we got here.  In learning about breastfeeding, one of the common things told to new moms is to not give babies a pacifier.  That a baby who gets attached to a pacifier might suck on it instead of nursing, which could lead to many issues, including a decreased milk supply.  Very determined to get an 'A' in Breastfeeding 101, we didn't really offer the pacifer to Lily save the car or when I returned to work at 5 weeks.  Who knows, with her personality, she probably wouldn't have ever taken it anyway, but of course on the worst days I'm going to sit here and go, "Why the bleep did I think that was a good idea?!"  Because, mixed with cosleeping and nursing on demand, I am now the pacifier.  

snuggling with mama!

Sometimes, it's sweet and wonderful.  I love to cuddle with her.  I love to snuggle and stroke her head.  She is now putting her little leg up on top of mine.  

But, there are a few other problems with this long-term, side-lying, night nursing.  I am laying in the bed with her for hours.  I can't move.  I have a hard time getting comfortable.  For months, I had debilitating hip pain, because once her legs got too long, I couldn't curl up comfortably next to her.  Sure, everyone says to use the pillows to support you, but that only goes so far.  Here are some things that I've been working on:

• I sometimes switch sides in the middle of the night or work on the top boob to give my hip some variety. 
• I try to get my bottom hip out from under my top hip. If my back is leaning out, which it easily does, I need to get that bottom hip away from the baby, so that I am leaning in a little. So I am laying more on the front of my hip than my side. It's hard and I feel like I'm constantly trying to wiggle it out. And, I loose the position while sleeping, so it still hurts a little bit, though not nearly as much as it did before. 
• I tried for awhile to wait until the baby fell asleep and unlatch, but my rolling around would wake her up and she would need another boob and we'd be right back where we were and I'd just go to sleep. Sometimes, I am successful.

  

  sleeping with her legs on top of mine
  

•  We transitioned her to a toddler bed on the floor at 11 months thinking that the rolling around was waking her up, but we found that it's just HER waking up wanting a boob. Grrr.
• Trying to feed her more during the day, and this girl eats like a champ, so that's not the problem.  Still trying to get her to eat more.
• Dr. Sears says for the long term side lying night nursers that we should seek out other people who are doing what we are doing, because most people don't understand and will likely say to just wean, stop cosleeping, let her cry or something.

Now, she likes to put her feet on me to snuggle and thati's causing a lot of back pain!  I can't win. But, she's so comfortable. If I give her the other leg, her leg is up too high to be comfortable, but she will sleep with her leg up there anyway! Crazy baby. I don't think we're ever going to be able to night wean.  

Rolly Polly Baby

So, this baby girl of ours loves her Daddy.  She loves Daddy so much that she must be touching both of us while sleeping.  This process has been repeating itself over and over at night lately.  Lily falls off the boob, eventually wakes up, realizes there's no boob, finds boob, realizes she's not touching Daddy, rolls until she finds Daddy, rolls back to boob, back to Daddy, back to Mommy, back to sleep.  Or something like that. 

Not only does this process wake up Mommy, but it also wakes up Daddy.  I don't mind.  It is the long hours of being awake at night and the early wake up times that get me.  But Daddy was suffering from being woken up too many times.  He refuses to sleep on the futon in the guest room, because he doesn't get to see Lily much as it is.  Besides that, he is just tickled pink that she cares enough about him to come find him in the bed at night.  Last night, he did sleep in our bed, which was a good gamble.  Lily only rolled over to him once.  And, after cuddling him for a few minutes, she spent most of the night sound asleep between us.

"Wait It Out" Method

The Dr. Sears Baby Sleep Book mentioned that mamas who are long term side lying nursing on demand (i.e. human pacifiers) should find other mamas who are doing the same.   I got frisky and joined some Facebook groups, including something called the "Wait It Out" Method.  Yes.  That's exactly what I'm doing, even though it's the hardest thing I've ever done.  We're waiting it out.  We're waiting until Lily decides she's gonna sleep longer.  Until she just eventually sleeps through the night.  For us, this means cosleeping, nursing to sleep, and nursing on demand (even at night).  I stay in the bed with Lily as long as she needs, and it's really hard on the weeks when I don't get any time to myself.  I relish in watching her fall asleep and getting to cuddle with her over and over.  For us, we have to respond to her nap and night wakings right away, or else Lily tends to wake up too much to go right back to sleep.  We want this journey to be the most comfortable for her.  She's happy, and that makes us happy. To each parent their own way.

Some recent posts from this Facebook group made me feel right at home:

Help! I think my baby has been abducted by aliens and replaced with a fake!! He fell asleep in under 5 minutes and not attached to the boob!

My lo cut tooth #5 last week. ..and is currently cutting #6. After several attempts, I realised that I am definitely not getting my nipple back any time soon Haha can someone bring me a sandwich? I'm hungry!Lol

How I feel when LOs pediatrician said I MUST do CIO because I'm just letting my LO manipulate me...GRIN AND IGNORE IT

I stumbled upon a mom in the local moms group who is doing the same with the long term side lying night nursing.  Man, is it good to have someone else to bounce stories off of and complain to who is not just going to tell me to night wean or cry it out.  Each baby is different and we know that Lily will have none of that weaning or crying business.

Finding Our Normal

It seems like we spend weeks chasing normal.  That is, what we want normal to be.  Even though we have the same routine, every day is different.  No two days are the same, even if we do the exact same thing. And, when we make a major change, such as dropping a nap, we find the first couple of days something that we can accept as our new normal.  Then, they fade away, as if a facade in the desert.  This only to spend the weeks after that trying to get us back there.

After we went from three to two naps, the next two days were perfect.  I would give up going to the gym and any activity in the morning (Le Leche League, Rise and Rhyme, library story time, etc) if most days were like that.  It was perfect, because Lily would wake up after 6:00am, easily fall asleep for naps and bedtime, and she would sleep on her own for 30 min to 2 hours.  For two days. Two days of heaven.  It was like two days filled with cake and ice cream.  Two days in June where it was my birthday.  I want our life to be like those two days.  It's like reliving that wonderful vacation in your mind.  Oh, this is the life!

When we find a normal that works for us, she figures out our hijinks, and those things stop working.  She gets onto us so quickly!  Every day, she seems to be pulling us farther and farther back to the way things were.  To this normal all too familiar that we cannot live with.  She wakes up between 5:00am and 5:30am despite my monumental efforts to keep her asleep.  She doesn't want to nap, but she is so tired and cranky for hours.  And, she won't let us lay her down for long before waking up.  That is, if we can actually set her down without waking her up in the first place.

We keep going through this pattern of finding our little bits of heaven and then loosing them, struggling to keep us from being sucked into the natural normal around here.  It's been a lot better since we dropped a nap.  I get to spend more time playing with my baby girl and the nap windows aren't so critical.  She does let us set her down for a little bit.   But, we are slipping back to the old normal.

Two Nap Update

And, we have a winner!  At least for a few days.  We dropped a nap last week, and it's been amazing.

1. It takes Lily 2 minutes to fall asleep.  This morning, it was seriously 1 minute.  The other day, she passed out in 10 seconds.  No more fighting for 40 minutes.  I don't know what in the world was wrong with me!

2. She is awake longer, so we can walk in the morning!  This has been great.  When we have about an hour or less left to the ideal nap time, or when Lily starts to get super fussy, we just put her and a toy in the stroller and head down the street.  She doesn't make a peep, because she's so busy taking in the sights and sounds.  Because of her nap schedule, my work schedule, and the weather, we hadn't really gotten to walk like I thought I would walk with my baby. 

3. She's gotten less cranky as she's gotten used to the new schedule.  Today was glorious.  We had so much fun.  I almost didn't think it was time to nap, but she nursed to sleep so quickly.

4. She's not constantly nursing.  She's got too much to do, so she's too busy to spend the morning buried in a boob.

5. We have been able to set her down longer during her sleep time.  We had to previously hold her constantly when she was sleeping.

Tired Enough

Gosh, I had apparently gotten pretty good at getting a tired baby who didn't want to sleep yet to go to sleep.  Not to fall asleep, but to go to sleep when she didn't want to.  It is painfully obvious now that she hadn't been ready to fall asleep when I thought she was.  This for weeks.  She would to go sleep so easily, and it slowly got harder and harder to get her to nap.  It would take nursing in combination with standing, rocking, singing, white noise, and patting most days.  I know!  Sure, she was cranky and seemed like she was sleepy.  But, she wasn't ready to sleep.  These past few days, since we dropped a nap, she's been sooooo tired that she's passed right out.  And, she is staying asleep a little longer.  There were weeks where we could have spent extra time playing.  There is this fine line between not tired enough and too tired.  We had an overtired baby a few months ago, and now we have a baby that's not tired enough.  I can fix that.  We can go on a walk.  We can go to the store.  We can sit on the porch.  We can have a dance party.  We can play in the jumper.  We can go crazy.

We'll see. One of the hallmarks of a high need baby is the feeling that we're geniuses when we figure out something that works (after weeks of being at our wits end), only a few days or a week later have her figure us out and it stop working.  I am not counting on this being the end-all-be-all, but I do certainly feel like we missed a boat somewhere.

Napping the Attached Baby

We don't hold Lily to any specific schedule.  It has really helped us to watch her, observe her cues, and help her get to a nap when she's showing us that she is tired enough to sleep.  A word that gets tossed around a lot is "routine" and that is something we definitely do have.

About four months ago, I was searching for baby sleep help when I wound up in a Babycenter.com forum about teaching your baby to sleep. That sounded great. If it was something I was or wasn't doing, I could quickly change that.  I quickly discovered that this was yet another version of the "cry it out" method, which while some parents swear by it, is not in line with our attachment parenting philosophy.  That, and Lily would have no part in it anyway.  She'd tell me right where to stick it.  But, there was one glorious take-away from my short stint in the teaching your baby to sleep realm: The Sleep/Wake Time Chart.  From the various readings on baby sleep, the members of this particular Babycenter.com forum collaboratively created a chart that made it easy to see the average number and length of sleep and wake times.

This is a link to the public/shared collaborative document.  It is really cool, because I keep checking back to find more changes based on information people have thought to add.  Below is an embedded copy of the one I saved in my Google Docs.  I use the whole chart for a loose reference, and I completely ignore the recommended time before responding to night wakings.  Lily is not yet capable of putting herself back to sleep most of the time.  Being a high need baby, it will escalate very quickly.  Within a minute, she will be wide awake and it will take an hour to get her back to sleep.

Better Observe Tired Cues

When I first looked at this chart, Lily had needed to have 4 solid naps.  We were letting her get overtired.  We needed to better observe her nap cues, which we were not doing at all.  She was not getting enough naps.  We had been just letting her fall asleep whenever she naturally did instead of realizing that we now needed to help her sleep when she was giving us clear clues.

When Lily needs a nap, she's cranky.  She will be quick to fuss if left down on her own.  She will rub her face, rub her eyes, and pull her ears.  Her eyes get red and squinty.  She has this pitiful kind of whiny cry that we know is her sleep cry.  Now that she's more mobile, she starts crawling all over everything.  She wants to be up, now down, now on grandma, now on mommy, now on daddy, now over here, now over there. It's a combination of those cues.  At first, we had to really study her to figure out when she was tired.  Now, we've got it down.

Trouble Getting To Nap = Probably Need To Drop Nap

When we had trouble getting her to nap for consecutive days a couple of months ago, we took that as a cue that she needed to transition from 4 naps to 3.  Because of my wonkey work schedule, she occasionally still took a 4th late nap, but that's because my mom does not think that she'll make it to my return home from work.

This morning, I had the hardest time getting Lily to nap again.  She showed me the cranky signs after breakfast.  But, she wouldn't nap.  Forty minutes after first starting to get her to sleep, she's still fighting me.  So, I stop.  It was obviously not working.  I realized that she had taken 40 minutes to get to nap yesterday morning.  And, that Tuesday she didn't nap at all.  Now, she's in the middle of a wonder week and teething, so I had been attributing it to that.  But, we realized that she's trying to drop a nap.  That's why it's so hard to get her to sleep when she usually sleeps.  I thought I was seeing tired signs, but her cues won't even out until she's fully transitioned to two naps.  She was just a little fussy after breakfast.  I did think it was odd that she wasn't rubbing her eyes or pulling on her ears. Mystery solved.

If this is the new nap schedule, I will skip the gym and everything else I have on the calendar before work until she goes down to one nap.  This was divine.  She finally fell asleep near 10:00am.  She loves the new fan Daddy got her for her room.  She cannot stay awake while trying to figure it out.  It's too cute.  I knew I had to leave for work soon, so I scoop her up and lay in bed with her.  I fell asleep for about 15 minutes.  I love cuddling with her in bed, especially now that the mattress topper is so comfortable and I have no hip pain.  I got to sneak away, and I hoped that she would sleep awhile longer.  She wound up sleeping for more than 2.5 hours! 

Baby girl is getting older.  :)