Life on Abram Lake
Life as a rural physician Mama in the backwoods of Northwestern Ontario
Sleep Training Round Two
Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.
There is nothing that parents the world over covet more. It occupies our daily thoughts and dominates our conversations.
If you ever listen in on parents chatting, it always goes something like this:
“Aw, you’re little girl is so sweet! How old is she?”
“Eight weeks.”
“Beautiful. She’s lovely. Is she sleeping through the night yet?”
“Uhhhh. No.” (Do you see my face? Does this face look like she is sleeping through the night!?!?!)
“Well, you should sleep train her!”
Ah! The dreaded topic of sleep training.
Thirty years ago, sleep training, along with things like sleep sacks and bumbo chairs just simply did not exist. At least not in the way that it does today with books, online forums and sleep consultants that will actually come to your house (for a small fortune) and spend the night with your baby!
Of course parents have been ‘sleep training’ their babies for decades, but likely it was born out of pure practicality. I’m sure most of us were made to ‘cry-it-out’ to some extent because when you have multiple children and an endless to-do list, that’s just what you have to do to survive.
Today, in our internet-based society, no longer do moms turn to their moms, sisters or aunties for help and advice. They turn to Google, leading to hours of ‘research’ on parenting forums, blogs and online discussion groups making the task of navigating the muddy waters of raising children that much murkier.
Before becoming a parent, I had no clue about infants and sleep. You may remember how I struggled with Henry, confused by the conflicting advice and opinions that I read online and in parenting help books. This time around with Alice, I thought, I am going to get this sleep thing right from the get-go and sail through the dreaded ‘100 days of hell’.
Ha! What a naive thought! Alice, of course had other plans.
Trying not to use ‘sleep props’, like a soother, swaddling or nursing/rocking to sleep, I cruised through the blissful first week week of Alice’s life, congratulating myself on our success. This honeymoon period of infancy where babies sleep through anything and fall asleep at the drop of a dime is made to make parents feel that having a baby ‘really isn’t so bad’ and lead to statements like, “I don’t really know what people are complaining about, having a baby is easy!” (Blake!).
THIS IS NOT REALITY! DO NOT FALL INTO THIS TRAP!
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| The morning after Alice was born |
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| A week old |
I felt like I was losing my mind. We struggled through those weeks. Oh, how we struggled.
Alice would cry for hours in the evenings, then would be up every 2 hours at night to feed. It wasn’t uncommon for me to spend up to two hours trying to get her back to sleep leading to a nightly average of about 4 hours of sleep broken up throughout the night. I remember saying to my girlfriends loved seeing 4am on the clock because that meant that there was only two more hours of hell left.
It was beyond exhausting and I felt like I just could NOT get a break. Just Alice and I, battling it out together in the spare room, night after night. You would think that I would be used to chronic sleep deprivation after the gruelling hours of medical school then residency, but let me tell you, I would rather repeat all of my medical training before going through the newborn phase again and that is saying a lot!
Life on Abram Lake 