Helping my baby sleep: Moving beyond choosing her OR me
When my daughter was one years old, she was still actively nursing through the night. I was working full time and nursing felt like a really important part of our relationship since we weren't together during the day. She would nurse a couple of times when I got home and then she was still waking two to three times a night to nurse. After a year of not having full sleep, as most parents know, it takes its toll and I was ready to be done with waking up in the night. I began the search for solutions. Was it dimming the lights way before bedtime to induce enough sleepiness that would carry her through the night? Was it the Johnson & Johnson lavender scented lotion that would help to put her in a sleepy mood that would encourage her to sleep through the night? The list went on and on of the things I tried to seduce her into a full night's sleep. When none of those things worked, I began to look into sleep training.
Her bed was right next to mine so there was no easy way for me to just close the door and let her figure it out on her own. In desperation, I tried the cry it out method one night. I stayed in the living room and went in every 5 minutes as she cried to tell her that it was okay and it was time to sleep, but it felt like a betrayal of our relationship that when she would start to cry I would walk out, close the door and leave her on her own. Sure, she eventually slept that night, but it didn’t feel like I was being supportive of her by doing that. I would have considered myself an attachment parent at that point, responding to her every need and being aware of how to be very respectful of her as a young human. As beautiful as that was, it was leaving me ragged! Where was there room for my needs?
After I realized the cry-it-out method was not for us, I couldn't imagine what other options there would be other than that or continuing to suffer through the night. Luckily, through a RIE class (Resources for Infant Educarers by Magda Gerber), I was handed an article from Hand in Hand about helping young children sleep. I couldn't believe what I was reading as I devoured the article. I couldn't believe that there was another choice between choosing her or choosing me, which were the black and white approaches I felt I was being offered by the attachment parenting approach or the cry it out approach. As an attachment parent, I couldn't let her cry because she needed me to respond to her in the night and if nursing was what soothed her, then let that be until she didn’t need that anymore. Or on the opposite side of the spectrum, choosing me over her meant my needs were more important than hers, which would mean letting her cry it out alone in the room until she figured out that crying was futile and I wasn't going to come. The fact that there was this middle alternative, that I could meet my needs and still be there with her and even use this as an opportunity to heal any underlying reasons that were causing her to wake up just by deeply listening to her instead of just pacifying her, was incredible.
I was desperate and couldn't wait to try. She nursed to sleep as usual and I laid her in her crib to sleep. I wondered how it would turn out when it was time to just listen and not nurse in the middle of the night. Around midnight she woke up crying and reached for me. I stood next to her crib, put my hand on her back and said, “Not time for nursing now. It's time for sleep.”
She cried more and I just kept saying, “Not now, it's time for sleep.”
As she was standing up in her crib reaching for me, I didn't pick her up because I knew that it would be very difficult at that point to have her latched onto me, so I just stood next to her crib put my hand on her back as she stood and said, “I'm right here with you. It’s time to sleep.”
Her cries intensified even more and she began making sounds that I had never heard from her. She went from a sad cry to loud, loud screaming. She began to get very red and hot and began clawing at my shirt, trying to bite me, trying to scratch my face and pull my hair. I kept pulling myself back a little bit, close enough so I was still with her but far enough so that I wouldn't get hurt. All I said was, “I'm here. I'm right here with you.”
She threw herself down onto her mattress and began screaming and kicking. She was so red and hot and loud. I began to have a moment of doubt and then I remembered something so profound from the article which was that when it starts to get very intense, when the cries and the physical release get very big, it means we’re in deep territory. It has to get bigger before it would get better and since childbirth wasn’t so long ago, that reminded me of being very close to birth when the contractions got their worst. The idea that this was a really good place for her to be, with my careful, loving attention made a lot of sense to me. It was clear she was working on a really big fear. I didn’t have to understand what fear she was working on, all I needed to do was to believe that she could make it through this dark place and that I would be there with her every step of the way.
So I rode the wave of emotion with her as she went into the darkest place I had seen my baby go through. I felt like I was witnessing a profound healing and I can still sense the electric air in the bedroom that night. My husband came in to check because of the frightening sounds he was hearing, disconnected from the experience because he was in the other room. When he walked in with a frightened look on his face I told him, “It's ok. We are okay. This is good work.” He left, sensing that maybe it was ok but shaken nonetheless.
For the remainder of that hour and a half, it was just her and I in this healing bubble. She was safe because I was there. She was safe because I was seeing her and she didn't have to go into that frightening place alone. During that time, she went from flailing, screaming, red, hot ,sweaty, to quiet whimpering to working up to sweating and frothing again. I just stood by her and trusted the process, touching when appropriate, speaking when appropriate, but not picking up.
Eventually, she laid down on her back and was crying softly. I leaned over into the crib and put my hand on her chest. I told her how much I loved her, how brave she was because that was really hard, but I was there with her the whole time. She responded in the most surprising, tender way. She looked up at me, and with her little 1 year old hand, touched my face gently. I felt like she was saying, “thank you for being there with me as I went to that deep dark place. Thank you for trusting me and you enough to let us have this experience so I could heal whatever I needed to heal that was keeping me from getting the rest I needed. Thank you for not leaving me to do this by myself and listening to me and loving me even through the worst parts of it.”
After a year of being a mother, it was one of the first moments I didn’t doubt myself or what I should be doing. I had been given the gift of listening, not solving, that I could use to help her heal.
Needless to say, in about two hours she woke up again and cried for 45 more minutes. I knew what I needed to do and was prepared for more intensity, but this 2nd time had much less intensity than the first time. She stayed lying down the whole time and just rolled and thrashed around the crib. I continued to stand next to her, putting my hand on her when it seemed appropriate to show her I was still there. When it seemed like she was getting close to relaxing, I would say, “Yes baby, it's time to sleep.” Sometimes that prompted more crying, so it meant there was more releasing to do. Eventually, when I said, “It's time to go to sleep,” and she just looked at me and closed her eyes, I had the sense that she was done.
From that day forward she slept through the night. No more waking. No more nursing during the night. We continued our daytime nursing relationship for a few more years but we both began to get the sleep during the night we were both desperate for. I was able to get my needs met by recognizing that she had healing to do that could only be done through the use of Limit Setting and StayListening. That was the beginning of my complete gratitude for the profound Hand in Hand parenting tools.