Broken

On Saturday night, we hit two milestones with baby Garrett. The first was that I fed him at 8:30pm and he didn't awake to be fed until just after 2am. That means he revealed that he can go 6 hours without food. Yahoo! That same night he managed to keep me awake from 2am to 6am. I had a little breakdown at 6am and decided that I was simply going to put Garrett in his bassinet and I retreated to our bedroom. I have not been sleeping in our bedroom since Garrett was born since I felt like it didn't make sense to keep Kevin AND I awake with Garrett. I miss our bedroom, our sheets and our bed very much.

So I retreated to our room and put my blinders on and shoved some earplugs in my ears. I figured Kevin would be awake pretty shortly and if he was crying uncontrollably Kevin could appease Garrett.

Kevin awoke and saw me in our bed and figured that Garrett was so calm I decided to sleep in our room. Ha! When Kevin finally roused me awake at 8am I notified him that I was broken. Garrett had broken me. 4 weeks of not sleeping had me frazzled, worn and emotional. I was starting to hate my life and really resent our child. I decided I couldn't do it anymore. I would from here on out be sleeping in our room and Garrett will be sleeping (or crying) in a different room. We made this decision pretty early on with Delaney as well but mostly this was because she was so uncontrollably fussy during the day that sleeping at night was our only survival mechanism. Garrett is much easier during the day, but it turns out that not sleeping for 4 straight weeks does terrible things to your body and mindset. Honestly I felt like if I didn't make a change that I would go insane and likely leave this family. I not exaggerating. I am cranky, tired, pale, malnourished, impatient and lethargic. I am pretty sure most of this is due to night after night with only 3-5 hours of sleep.

Anyway... I had some pretty guilty thoughts yesterday about letting such a little child cry it out and taking the tough love approach. But I really felt like I had no choice. Friends and acquaintances often comment on how well Delaney approaches sleep and how easy she is to put to bed. A big part of this is because of how fussy she was as an infant and how, basically, she trained us to leave her alone at the end of the day. I often tell people that I think in some ways our children train and mold us for what they need, at least I justify our bedtime approach with her that way.

So maybe this was Garrett's way of telling me that he needs to sleep alone. I had visions of us sharing a bed and space for months, and having a calm baby who would like to snuggle and would peacefully drift off to sleep as I nursed him. I honestly didn't care how often I had to nurse him and was prepared to be at it every 2 hours or more if needed. So many of my friends have relayed this type of experience with me and I felt like this was going to be my shot at it.

Sigh... it looks like that vision or expectation is broken. Last night we took the first cry it out approach and I must admit that today I am a completely different person. He went to bed at 10pm, awoke around 2am when I fed him, I put him back in the other room and he awoke again at 5am. I fed him again and promptly put him back in the other room. At 8am I finally got up to start my day and feed him. I will sheepishly admit that I have no idea if he was wailing, flailing, TO'd or calm during any of those sleeping hours between 2am and 8am. Because I was peacefully adrift in some much needed REM in my own bed and in my own sheets (with the monitor turned down so much it was nearly off). And yeah, as you can imagine, there is some guilt flowing around my head today but given how amazing my body felt this morning those guilty feelings are far overpowered. I am not going back.

So far with both kids home today things have been going well. I have more patience with Delaney, she seems to be in great spirits and life seems manageable. I guess this is the newborn experience I was meant to witness.