Sleep Training and Baby Wearing

I shared this link on my facebook wall and was going to respond via fb comments, but it would’ve turned into a blog post anyway.

So! Attachment Parenting, co-sleeping, cry it out….there are so many labels we go around sticking on people and ourselves. We’re parents. We’re survivors! We’re…..exhausted…

A late night with Levi

 Seriously though. Sleep deprivation is no joke. I found with each baby that recovering was the part that took the most out of me. The hormones, nursing, fussy nursling, grappling with formula vs. boob juice (a whole other post!), and later on juggling other kids that deserve some mama-time as well. (And for a few of us, there is the baby blues, and PPD that may show their ugly faces.) For me to be on my game I’ve got to have sleep. Kherington, our youngest girl, is a lot like her mama. She get’s sleepy and turns into one big emotional time bomb. That’s me. Not ok when little ones need me. Enter Sleep Training.

Daddy and Levi at the Houston Zoo

Levi napping in the sunlight

Like I’ve said before, Mike and I did a lot of reading. We tossed out what we didn’t agree with and stored what made sense to us in our brains for later use. The question was: Do we want kids in our bed or not? For us the answer was no. After making sure we were on the same page with how we were going to go about making this a reality, we committed. Each kiddo was a little different and we needed to tweak things a bit depending on their personality. 

Jace was not a fan of that goat!

Jace absolutely needed routine. We had to get him to bed at the same time every single night because he woke up at the butt-crack of dawn whether he’d gone to bed at 7pm or 11pm and was a bear without enough sleep. He’s always been our early bird. Also we didn’t begin sleep training with him until he was a little over 4 months old and that made things even more difficult. Aubrie was easy-peasy. Kherington has always needed a little more reassurance, but once she got it, she got it. 

A brand new Kherington

 Levi was our odd ball. I nursed him the longest and so he gave us our first real taste of co-sleeping. Not my thing usually but I had 3 other little beings to tend to the next day. He was in bed with me so I could maximize on those night time hours. Once he weaned (a little past 6 months) we did sleep training with him too. 

Aubrie is a wild sleeper

Sleep training means different things to different people. When I say sleep training, I mean we established a predictable bed time routine and laid the baby down in their own bed to sleep for the night and did not pick them up again. Again, we tweaked things for each kiddo but really they all followed the same routine.

At the San Antonio Zoo with a napping Levi and the rest of my littles

In our family when the babies are new, we tend to stick close to home to try to figure out where their body clocks are. Once they have their nights and days figured out we try to stick to a pretty rigid routine until good sleep habits are mastered. My kids tended to want to go down for the night around 7-730pm, so we began calming things down around 530-6 so as not to have an overstimulated baby on our hands right before bedtime. Our bedtime routine would start with a bath or a diaper change depending on the day, followed by pjs, a bottle or nursing, then some cuddles and maybe a book, and finally saying “Night night, I love you.” All of this being done with soft, calm voices and dim lights (after the bath). Then we lay them in their bed (I’ll usually rub their head for a second and say an extra ‘I love you’) and walk out of the room with confidence. That’s important!

Aubrie before bed so happy to be in her pink pjs!

We just act like it’s another day. The sky is blue. The grass is green. You fall asleep in bed. It’s a concrete fact around here. Inevitably there is fussing and sometimes (read: Jace Moore!) some all out “someone come get me this instant or so help me I will scream until my head explodes and tell the world what awful people you are for making me….*snore*, *snore*”, but we don’t abandon them or withhold love. We’d go in at regular intervals (the microwave timer was our dictator there for a little while) and lay them back down (if they were sitting up) and pat their little backs or rub their little heads and remind them “it’s night night time, I love you.” and walk out of the room again. This period of adjustment always felt like it would last forever and it was never what I would call ‘fun’, but for us it was necessary, temporary, and completely worth it.

Aubrie was always smiling! Here she is before her nap.

On baby wearing. I do it because sometimes a stroller is bulky, my babies would sooner become discontent in a stroller than in my arms, and because if they're happy on my back (or chest), then they're not sprinting away from me or knocking things off shelves, or getting kidnapped. Plus I'm not a fan of strangers touching my kids, and they're less likely to do that if I'm holding them. #doiknowyou #wherehaveyourhandsbeen #backupoffmybaby 

 

Levi still loves being up in a carrier

Out for a walk when they were tiny.

Some notes:

*Be on the same page! I firmly believe that the reason this worked for us was because we were on the same page about our desired outcome and our method of getting there. You better believe there were times I wanted to just walk it and pick up my little one, but Mike reminded me of what we were doing and why. To us picking them up was like hitting the reset button and undoing it all. Not fair to them. Not fair to us. 

*Surround yourself with people that have your back! People that empower you and instill confidence in you when you may doubt yourself. Don't hesitate establishing some boundaries if necessary.

*In the end it was us sticking to the plan that made the process go so quickly and now we’ve got 4 littles that will sleep anywhere. I’m down with that.

*With our girls we used a baby lullaby CD for some additional continuity each night since they’ve shared a room their whole lives and one or the other was always tossing, turning, babbling, or fussing.

My sweet girls as toddlers

Let me finish by saying that this is what worked for us. I don’t think for one second that this is the right way for everyone else's family. I’m for building each other up. Parents gotta stick together. 

Season of Darkness

The older Jace got, the farther away from my friends I became. I loved that little baby more and more each day. I loved exploring his baby dimples and rolls and hearing his unrestrained laughs. My feelings toward Jace were a glaring contrast with how I felt about most other things. Nothing was familiar.

I’d started at Baylor intending to start from scratch, in a sense. What could I do, who could I be in this new environment? I imagined that if I could just get my head above the smoke and take in some untainted air…just get some distance, I would figure things out.  The switch from college freshman on a mission to mother was fast for me. I didn’t have time to adjust, and really I don’t think I did adjust for a very long time. At the time, talking about it with close friends only helped a little. It wasn’t their fault. You don’t know until you know. And they didn’t know how it felt to be a mother- so consuming and awesome, and lonely. I didn’t feel left behind. I felt like I had been swept up in this rushing current with no idea where I was heading or who I‘d be when I got there.

A month after our Jace turned 3 and about 3 weeks before Aubrie turned one we met our Kherington. After Kher’s birth, I felt wrong.  I was weepy and hopeless. Being at home alone terrified me. I was in bad shape. I called Mike more than a few times tearfully asking him to please come home early. I just couldn’t do it! I tried my best to be a ‘happy’ mom to my littles. They were so beautiful. Such gifts. But I was so exhausted- emotionally, mentally. The self-control it took to be patient and act like the mommy they deserved was almost crippling. Inside my head I wanted to get in the car and drive, far, far away…and sleep. I had to keep it together though. I never wanted to cry in front of my babies. Never wanted them to feel emotionally responsible for me. That wasn’t their job. I kept myself as tightly wound as I could until Mike got home.

When I laid my head down at night, I would wish for sleep. I would pray for rest, for help. Would I ever be ok again? Who was I? I was going to fail my babies. What mother thinks about driving away from her home? Who was I?!  And then replay of my day would roll….I was too short tempered, I shouldn’t have disciplined Jace for __________. I was no fun, I should have taken them for a walk instead of keeping them inside all day. I was so lazy! How could I have let myself fall asleep during Thomas? Failure. Why did you raise your voice? His first memories are going to be of his mommy being upset with him. Oh God, I take it back. Are you even listening?!  I can’t do this!......

The worst part is that no one knew, because it perpetuated the loneliness. I hid it as best I could. The acting job I did in front of everyone else should have gotten me some sort of award, I’m telling you! In my mind I had to pretend. I thought everyone was just waiting to watch us fail. I couldn’t be the hole that sunk the ship. So I smiled. And I laughed. And behind closed doors I wept bitterly.

Hindsight is such interesting perspective. I can see now that I should have gone to my doctor. Mike and I have had many talks in the years since this Season of Darkness and we both wish we would have recognized it for what it was. Many of my friends have had babies since then and I’ve heard quite a few of them talk to me about having the same (but much less intense!) feelings as I did. Sometimes I wonder if my emotional state was exponentially worse because I didn’t have peers to talk about it with. I didn’t know that new moms felt overwhelmed. Everyone that I observed seemed fine. Happy. Reveling in their mommyhood, so I deduced that something must be wrong with me which led to me being mad at myself, which made me uber aware of my short-comings, which compounded my exhaustion as I laid up at night going over all the things I should have done better…..a cycle. One that knocked me off my feet.

I never doubt the Lord’s presence in my life. I couldn’t have climbed out of that pit alone. When I did, I was scarred and different. But I was out and I never wanted to go back there again.

Being able to determine the feelings that contribute to the cycle is key. Being able to discern exactly what I’m feeling and what may have caused it enables me to talk about it with Mike or Meghan (my person). Often times they don’t need to say much, I just need to be able to talk it out. Other times I need their strength, their affirmation, and their perception of me to combat the lies that float around my head. Another tool I’ve found useful is exercise. Really! Moving, running, lifting heavy things…it brightens my mood and reminds me I’ve got grit and perseverance.

As I was wrestling with the words in this post, I reached out to My Person for some direction and she reached into my heart and gave voice to the words I felt but didn’t know how to say, so:

“But then, even then, sometimes all those tools don’t work, and you know what, that’s okay too. Because seasons of darkness are what make our seasons of light so much more precious and beautiful.”

This time in our life had to have be as terrifying for Mike as it was for me- maybe more so because he couldn’t feel what I was feeling. All he knew was that I wasn’t ok. Fixing situations is his favorite thing. But he couldn’t figure this one out, and I know it was hard on him. Thankfully, Mike tried to make himself a safe place. He didn’t understand, but he listened to my irrational thoughts, held me for eons while I cried, soothed me when I woke up sobbing from nightmares, and he built me up. He just kept building me up, countering my perceived failures with all the successes he saw. He knew when I needed more than he could give me and watched the kids so that I could have time alone with my best friend and she poured into me as well. Eventually their words became mental road blocks and when I would head down that road again, I ran into their words; their healing, life-giving, loving words. 

Mandy

Backwards Thinking

I began my new role as a father with a very general idea of the type of father I wanted to be- loving, strong, caring, just, etc. General. Unspecific. The ideals that came to my mind were ones that I’d always thought of as traditional manly qualities.  Provider, protector, strong and honorable.  How was I supposed to simply start acting out those qualities? Just like that.  As an 18-year-old soon to be father, I guess I had all these characteristics I wanted to personify but no idea how to live them out. I knew I wanted to be the person that my kids desired to turn to and to be the rock my wife stood upon. I needed a plan. A course of action I could follow.

I’d seen men.  I’d seen men falter, and I’d seen men do good.  I had some examples of how to be ‘manly’, of course.  My father is a good man.  He provided for his family.  He tried to instill good qualities in me, and if I may say so myself, I think he did all right in that respect, too.  My childhood was ultimately a charmed affair.  I had three square meals a day, lived in a house without any problems, played soccer and baseball and any other sport I wanted.  The biggest advantage I had was that I had two parents that loved me throughout my entire life. 

I would say that the most important lesson I learned from my parents was that to be loved, I simply needed to be there.  Being perfect is not necessary.  It’s a lesson that has carried me through difficulties and one that I am going to make sure my kids learn.

 As I struggled to navigate this new road ahead of me, I thought about how too many kids today do not have a father around, and that was unacceptable to me. That was not a legacy I would leave for my child.  I loved Amanda and I didn’t know how everything was going to fit together. I was decided, however, that we would make it work.   

One of the least proud moments in my marriage happened after a particularly hard day.  I came home after work having been to school and work stocking shelves (8 hours that day), and I was exhausted.  I got home and Jace was still awake at 11:30 or so.  I was just done.  There was no way he should have been up that late, he was just a baby.  So I got ticked off at Amanda, and I let her know it.  The phrase that came out of my mouth at one point was, “I don’t want to come home from work just to work some more.  I want to be able to come home and relax.” I didn’t even stop to think that if Jace was still up then she must have had a hard day too. She looked at me and I didn’t see that the way she looked closely mirrored my own haggard state of mind. She said, “Sorry for ya, buddy, but you’re a father 24-7. You don’t get an off day from this.” Yeah…I’ll take a tall, cold glass of reality served up blunt. Thanks.

Looking back now, it’s amazing to me that I could actually utter those two short sentences.  No matter how tired I am, that never even crosses my mind now.  I miss my kids when I’m at work.  I want to be home with them through the day even though I can’t at this point in time.  It was a sign of my immaturity that I could think it; it was a sign of my conceit that the words passed my lips.  I knew she was as tired as I was, and if anything she just had different pressures than I did, if not more.  How I could imagine that she would…what? Give me pity or pat me on the back?  Sit me down in the recliner and hand me a beer? I don’t know.  What I did know, though, was that something had to change.  Big time. 

I started reading books on what it meant to be a man, books on leadership, marriage, and the role of a father- really anything that I thought might equip me. From Wild at Heart to The Five Love Languages and everything in between, I read.  I read how to be a leader at work and at home, and then I read some more. I learned that what I needed to work on first was myself.  I quickly found out that I could not get my strength or leadership from my wife.  I could not get it from some outside source.  It had to come from somewhere inside of me. 

Someone who is not strong cannot give strength to others, and I knew that would be a requirement at some point. Easy to read up on… in practice, however, it’s much more…nuanced.  How does it look for me and my family?  It’s messy, I’ll start out with that.  I’ve never been very good at it.  I’ve been blessed with a wife that encourages me to lead. She has told me, repeatedly, that she wants—no, needs—me to be the leader of our household. Through many truth-filled conversations and trial and error, we have found a balance (it will be forever evolving) that works for our home.

The only way to lead that seems right to me is by being a servant.  I’ve learned over time that my love is demonstrated to both my wife and my children through serving them.  Not only that, I feel love for them more when I serve them.  I have to consistently make that choice (because I have found myself to be selfish), which is definitely tough for me to do.  When I make that choice- to be a servant- I feel connected and vital and loved.  It’s amazing how that works!  It’s completely against what I thought when I got into this whole deal.  I serve them, and I feel better.  I serve them, and I feel loved.  I serve them, and I lead. 

Isn’t that backwards? 

When I Grow Up

Before we move on, it’s important to me that you understand that this post was difficult to write. Pieces of me are exposed in the body of this post. Pieces that are normally very private because I have a fear that by sharing some parts of my childhood, it will come across as a cry for sympathy. There is nothing that would affect me more. My personal standard demands that I never use my past as an excuse for mistakes I make in the future. My life is my own. My own to live, to destroy, or to build up. My choices are mine to make. I refuse to give out credit or blame to others for choices that I have made- good or bad. That being said, some events in my past have certainly led me to make choices that have shaped the woman I’m trying to become. Leaving out these pieces would be painting an incomplete picture of our story, because as we said in our very first blog, memories form the building blocks of our lives.

I’ve always known my mother was broken. Before I even knew what that meant. And it was my job to make sure she was ok. To be the level head, to be her friend, her co-conspirator, her shoulder for when the hurts of the past crept up and bubbled over. One of my earliest memories is comforting my mother.

She pulled the car over into a parking lot off of Rundberg Ln. in Austin. She couldn’t see through her tears to drive. I was scared, but I didn’t know why. The intensity of her sobs screamed ‘danger!’, ‘emergency!’ My first grade reasoning told me that if she was crying so hard, something really bad must have happened. I climbed into the front seat and found some napkins in the glove box. Handing them to her, I asked her why she was crying. The snippets I remember are of her explaining to me how everyone always leaves her. How her mother didn’t want her (my maternal grandmother drove off to start a new family leaving my 5 year old mother and her 3 siblings with relatives), her father chose a new family (my mother would spend a good part of her childhood being passed between family members and then marry at 16), and she was unwanted and unloved. So, I comforted her. Of course she was loved. I loved her. Wasn’t that enough?

I was in second grade. My step-father’s mom was visiting. There was so much yelling that one particular night. I had the covers pulled over my head in my mom’s room. The voices got closer and in an instant they filled the space around me. My mom was pleading. I peeked out and watched as he pointed with authority “NO! You will get down on your knees and apologize.” My mother was sobbing. His mother stood in the doorway. I watched my mother, tears creating dark rivers down her face, turn. She dropped to her knees. She apologized for whatever she’d done. I remember the feeling of utter disgust and thinking “Never will I EVER be like her. Never will I EVER let someone make me do that.” My heart wept as I understood as best a child can that my mom wouldn’t protect me. She couldn’t stand up for herself.

It was after Jace and Aubrie were born, that my mother’s sketchy judgment hit me in the face. She’d been trying to convince us to allow our kids to see part of my family that, though I love, I’d determined were not a healthy example for my children. “You’re too protective! So-and-so wouldn’t hurt them, it’s not like they’re dangerous! You always blow everything out of proportion!” she accused. What I kept saying, that she refused to hear was that physical harm was not what I was concerned about.  Little children have big ears. How long would it be until Jace asked me what a joint was? How long until Aubrie repeated a curse word? How young would they be when they were exposed to adult material via electronics? When would my children start to mimic their speech? No. That world was not going to be their normal.

When I started to consider the life I wanted for my children, I was able to look at the questionable instances in my life from a parent’s point of view. And I was horrified.

Sitting on a relative’s lap on a plastic chair outside a shady apartment complex while holding a box containing little baggies with white powder? Normal. When I was small (too young to remember my age) I said things that led my mother to believe someone had been inappropriate with me. Authorities were notified. Events unfolded. She couldn’t have prevented what she didn’t know, but once she knew, she certainly could have made sure I was never in the same room with that person again. As it was though, not only was I around this person for a number of years, but I was allowed to spend the night where they lived. Nothing ever happened again. What I learned from the situation though, was that when something bad happens, I cannot trust my mother to protect me. 

These two examples of situations in which my mother didn’t exercise the best judgment were normal to me. But this brand of normalcy wouldn’t touch my children. Their childhood would be soaking up the love of God, it would be resting in the comfort of their Daddy’s strong arms, it would be the gift of having a mother love them with such a consistent ferocity that they took it for granted- never realizing that it could be any other way for them. As she was leaving that day she told me, “You just think you’re better than everyone else.” My promise was, “I may not be, but my kids will. That’s what they deserve.”

I would have no way of recognizing it in my childhood, but God in His loving way was already very much at work in my life. He instilled in me a resilient spirit, a heart that refused to harden, and a hope for a different sort of future. His faithfulness overwhelms me. I believe that He allowed me to recognize the wrongness of my home-life so that later when I had a laundry list full of ‘don’ts’ and I was intentionally seeking ‘do’s’, I would be more receptive to Him. I knew with a certainty the kind of woman, wife, and mother that I didn’t want to become, and when I started looking around me for examples of women I could emulate, the Lord delivered. 

And I am thankful.

Growing Pains

Amanda:

Often I find that the anxiety I associate with unknown territory or big changes in my life doesn’t come from the situation itself. It stems from the choices before me. What if I make the wrong one? Mike and I made the first decision: we would be together. I knew that one was solid, but there were a multitude of other choices we would have to make in the coming months. How do two college kids go from deciding whats best for 'me' to what's best for 'us'? Even though we wouldn’t marry until Jace was 4 months old, we approached our relationship as if we already were. Breaking up was not an option we left on the table. So… what next?! Unfortunately no one handed us a manual on ‘How to Build the Foundation for a Healthy Marriage in 7 Months!’

Mike:

So, at this point in the story, I should jump in and say that I was absolutely terrified.  I didn’t know how to raise a child.  I didn’t know how to be a husband.  Hell, I didn’t even know how to adequately feed and provide for myself.  My diet consisted mostly of macaroni and cheese, five dollar pizza, and Coke and rum.  I was working at a candy store.  I was in school, but I wasn’t paying attention so I BOMBED a couple classes that I should have sailed through.  I’m no dummy, but I was sure playing that role right then.  I was just wasting time. I had no anchor, no purpose.  

When we got the wake-up call that I needed to grow the heck up, I had no time to think about it and no time to waste on frivolous things.  Things changed quickly, from school to work and everything in between. In the time it took to drive all those places, the major thing on my mind was, “What in the world am I doing?  How am I going to make this work?!”  As I said, I was 18 and not ready for this.  I always thought I’d go through a few ‘wild’ years in college, graduate with a good degree, get married a couple years later, and have some kids once my career had fully matured.  Our choices put us on a different course, and my plan turned into a hodgepodge of torn-up dreams and best intentions.

If you know anything about me you’ll know that I like a plan, even if it’s a sparse, basic skeleton of one. At that point that I had no contingency, no fallback.  So, when my original was taken away, I went into panic mode.  I  was simply…scared.  How do you deal with setbacks?  With screw-ups?  With things that throw your life upside down in just about every way possible?  This is an issue I had to deal with (and, of course, Amanda did, too) at 18, when I hadn’t prepared.  My entire repertoire of feelings was within about ten degrees of ‘terrified.'

Amanda:

I headed back to finish my Spring semester at Baylor and ended up sleeping through most of it. I think the combination of emotional chaos and the first trimester of pregnancy were players in that. Looking back though, I wonder if I wasn’t trying to sleep off the nightmare my life was becoming. Mike would go on to spend the remainder of his semester with a rum and coke as his constant companion. Gosh we were a mess. I didn’t even have a car to move myself back to Austin when the semester was over. I had to hitch a ride with someone.

I remember walking into Mike’s house, now our house, fighting the urge to bolt. But I didn’t. Instead, I became intimately acquainted with Half Price Books over the next few months. Walking through the marriage, self-help, and parenting sections in a fog I would think, “I can’t believe this is my life” and would then adjust my thinking to “This is your life, Amanda. Suck it up.” The books that I picked up would become my syllabi. Discussions with Mike on breaking unhealthy cycles, love languages, and expectations in marriage would replace lectures.

Mike was as involved as he could be. He enthusiastically went to every appointment, asked questions, and got to know our doctor. I really don’t know how he managed it all. The summer going into his sophomore year he was a man on a mission. He switched his major from aerospace engineering at the University of Texas to accounting at Texas State and took an arduous 15 hours that fall semester. Because of his course load as well as the time it took to drive from Austin to Texas State in San Marcos, Mike also changed jobs and began stocking shelves at HEB. This meant he had to be at work as early as 3am some days. The night that our son was born Mike was running a fever of 102, the roads were iced over, and he still drove his sleep-deprived self to San Marcos to take his finals the following day. My husband is an absolute champion and I am blessed beyond measure to be his wife.

Mike:

We had a lot going on. Pregnancy is no joke. We had to go to and pay for doctor’s appointments, we needed TONS of things to get prepped for the baby, and to top it all off Mandy’s nose decided she could only eat certain things (so I could only eat certain things!). She did amazing growing that boy, even with all the turmoil in our life.  I love that woman, and I love showing her.  As an 18-year-old, that meant buying things for her. I bought her the fanciest ring I could afford—and put all two grand of it on a credit card.  With everything we had going on, I simply neglected that one little bill. 

Eventually, I had to face the music—and Amanda.  We got to the point that the electricity was shut off at the house more than once, so I had to break down and tell her that we were in money trouble (duh).  They weren’t repossessing the house (we were renting) or taking the cars (paid off), but her ring might have been first on the list to go.  How could I tell her that?  Again, the terror came up and just stuck with me, but I had to face the music this time.  There was no avoiding it, so I finally told her. 

She didn’t react in a way I thought she would.  She was obviously worried (more than worried), but it wasn’t the end of the world—or our marriage—that I thought it would turn out to be.  We talked through it.  I told her how overwhelmed I was simply with the idea of it, and how scared I was about what the people on the other end of the phone line would do when I told them I couldn’t pay them back right then.  Typical collector’s tactics, maybe, but it sure worked on 18-year-old me.  To my amazement, Amanda took the lead and talked to them instead.  I say talked, but I know it was more than that. I could hear the emotion in her voice as she explained the situation to them to get some resolution we could afford to live with.  I was amazed by her actions, but even more by her attitude.  That reinforced in me so strongly that we were really in this together.  I’d made a royal mess of things trying to do it all on my own.  Now here she was to help me along in the process to get things right.  She’s bailed me out of more bad situations than this one, but as one of the first, it sticks in my mind like none of the others ever really can.
 

Amanda:

This situation became a relationship strengthener when it could have easily been a deal breaker. Mike has always been a super hero to me. He never let me see him sweat. I thought there was nothing he couldn’t do and he worked hard on keeping me unaware of any hiccups. The two major lessons we learned from this hurdle are ones that are still front and center in our relationship today:

Trust that your spouse has your best interests at heart and go from there and:

Communication is like flame retardant.

We’ve found that if we approach every argument or misunderstanding with the assumption that the other absolutely has our best interests at heart, we can then move on to communication. I say communication is like flame retardant because if Mike and I constantly have an open line of communication with each other, then problems that could turn into major volcanic eruptions end up only being brief sparks put out by the cool water of compassion, and a sincere desire to understand the other’s point of view.