I still keep blogging every day, despite evidence to the contrary.
It's just that I keep deleting what I write, or saving it in draft form to go back to later again and again and again. Everything that I write sounds whiny. I don't want my blog to be whiny! Or it sounds too personal. The blog is supposed to be relatively anonymous to internet strangers. What to do, when only really personal things or whiny things come out of my brain?
Sleep deprivation is a weird thing.
There's one level, the first dramatic drop of large amounts of sleep, where your ears ring and you feel a bit dizzy and the walls appear to calmly breathe. The type of sleep deprivation where you know you shouldn't be driving.
There's a step further, where I get a sort of adrenaline rush that keeps me going, and I hallucinate that it feels like spiders are dropping onto my arms and hair. Why spiders? Who knows. It's not scary. After a while, I regulate and stop the hallucinating and just become a zombie. I may be a zombie, but I can drive again and pretend to be normal. And for some reason all the adrenaline makes it impossible for me to nap.
Then there's the long-term stuff, getting too little sleep over the days, weeks, and months... the kind that you can never quite come back from despite weekends full of sleep marathons, and you just kind of drag along, leaving bits of yourself behind. When you do get more sleep, it's disorienting.
The 4-month sleep regression is a whole different kind of beast.
Imagine that you have a wee spawnling that keeps you up at night, sleeping in 4-5 hour chunks (so nice!), or 2-3 hour chunks, with a 1.5-hour chunk here and there. Imagine that every time he wakes, it takes you 30-60 minutes to get him back to sleep, and another 30 for you to fall asleep. You think this is sleep deprivation, it's a mix of the zombie state and the long-term stuff that makes you wonder if you can ever get back the energy you used to have.
On the surface, people say I look fine. I have the glow of a happy new mother. Thanks! Glowing is awesome.
Then Torin's sleep habits suddenly changed. He can no longer be put down "drowsy yet awake"... if he's even the slightest bit not in his deepest sleep, he wakes up the second you lay him down. He wakes after 1 sleep cycle and can't return to sleep, which means he's only getting sleep in 45-60 minute chunks. Since it takes me 30 minutes to fall asleep each time, this means I'm only getting sleep in half-hour chunks. I have been getting about 4 hours of sleep a night, give or take, but in half-hour bits over 12 hours in bed.* Do you know what this does to a person?! I don't. I can't even write it out.
I reached a point where I was awake but literally could not move and Ryan had to bring me the crying baby to feed him, even though Torin was right next to me. This scares me a bit, especially since I am alone half the nights... I need to at least be able to respond to crying.
I have become a black hole for sleep. I suck it in at every chance, and you never see it again, it's like it never existed in the first place.
Sleep-training a 4-month old?
And so something must give, because I'm finding myself becoming an angry person. I'm not an angry person. My kindness and empathy are traits that make me happy.
Did you know that it's really difficult to read and make sense of books on baby sleep when you are sleep deprived? For the love of all that is holy, read up on baby sleep BEFORE you have a baby!!!
Anyway, it seems like the general consensus is that first you must get the baby on a schedule. Without a schedule that is aligned to the baby's rhythms, you can try to sleep train, but it will end in hours of crying until the baby's rhythm says it's bedtime.
I've gathered from several sources that the optimal schedule for a 4-month-old is: 7am wake, at least a half hour of morning sunlight (it's the brightest, to help reset circadian rhythm), 9am nap, 2pm nap, 7pm asleep. His current schedule is: 7am wake, sleep on and off until 9, no naps, afternoon sunlight, 12am asleep. They say that if you just get the bedtime early enough, everything else falls into place.
So that's my goal for the week. I'm on day 3 of it, and yesterday he not only managed to get both naps on time (both of which were at least an hour!), he also fell asleep 2 hours earlier than usual. AND he slept for 3 hours in a row, then put himself back to sleep without crying or being picked up for another 2 hours. I had to check him to make sure he was still alive, because it's only the 3rd time he's ever gone 6 hours without eating.
The next step is either actual sleep training or learning to relax enough to cosleep (my current record is 1.5 hours), but I'm not planning to cross that bridge until Torin's acclimated to the new bedtime.
Maybe they're right? Maybe a very early bedtime is the answer? Wish me luck.
*The only reason I'm still relatively human is because Ryan makes sure I get sleep in the mornings whenever he has a day off.
It's just that I keep deleting what I write, or saving it in draft form to go back to later again and again and again. Everything that I write sounds whiny. I don't want my blog to be whiny! Or it sounds too personal. The blog is supposed to be relatively anonymous to internet strangers. What to do, when only really personal things or whiny things come out of my brain?
Sleep deprivation is a weird thing.
There's one level, the first dramatic drop of large amounts of sleep, where your ears ring and you feel a bit dizzy and the walls appear to calmly breathe. The type of sleep deprivation where you know you shouldn't be driving.
There's a step further, where I get a sort of adrenaline rush that keeps me going, and I hallucinate that it feels like spiders are dropping onto my arms and hair. Why spiders? Who knows. It's not scary. After a while, I regulate and stop the hallucinating and just become a zombie. I may be a zombie, but I can drive again and pretend to be normal. And for some reason all the adrenaline makes it impossible for me to nap.
Then there's the long-term stuff, getting too little sleep over the days, weeks, and months... the kind that you can never quite come back from despite weekends full of sleep marathons, and you just kind of drag along, leaving bits of yourself behind. When you do get more sleep, it's disorienting.
The 4-month sleep regression is a whole different kind of beast.
Imagine that you have a wee spawnling that keeps you up at night, sleeping in 4-5 hour chunks (so nice!), or 2-3 hour chunks, with a 1.5-hour chunk here and there. Imagine that every time he wakes, it takes you 30-60 minutes to get him back to sleep, and another 30 for you to fall asleep. You think this is sleep deprivation, it's a mix of the zombie state and the long-term stuff that makes you wonder if you can ever get back the energy you used to have.
On the surface, people say I look fine. I have the glow of a happy new mother. Thanks! Glowing is awesome.
Then Torin's sleep habits suddenly changed. He can no longer be put down "drowsy yet awake"... if he's even the slightest bit not in his deepest sleep, he wakes up the second you lay him down. He wakes after 1 sleep cycle and can't return to sleep, which means he's only getting sleep in 45-60 minute chunks. Since it takes me 30 minutes to fall asleep each time, this means I'm only getting sleep in half-hour chunks. I have been getting about 4 hours of sleep a night, give or take, but in half-hour bits over 12 hours in bed.* Do you know what this does to a person?! I don't. I can't even write it out.
I reached a point where I was awake but literally could not move and Ryan had to bring me the crying baby to feed him, even though Torin was right next to me. This scares me a bit, especially since I am alone half the nights... I need to at least be able to respond to crying.
I have become a black hole for sleep. I suck it in at every chance, and you never see it again, it's like it never existed in the first place.
Sleep-training a 4-month old?
And so something must give, because I'm finding myself becoming an angry person. I'm not an angry person. My kindness and empathy are traits that make me happy.
Did you know that it's really difficult to read and make sense of books on baby sleep when you are sleep deprived? For the love of all that is holy, read up on baby sleep BEFORE you have a baby!!!
Anyway, it seems like the general consensus is that first you must get the baby on a schedule. Without a schedule that is aligned to the baby's rhythms, you can try to sleep train, but it will end in hours of crying until the baby's rhythm says it's bedtime.
I've gathered from several sources that the optimal schedule for a 4-month-old is: 7am wake, at least a half hour of morning sunlight (it's the brightest, to help reset circadian rhythm), 9am nap, 2pm nap, 7pm asleep. His current schedule is: 7am wake, sleep on and off until 9, no naps, afternoon sunlight, 12am asleep. They say that if you just get the bedtime early enough, everything else falls into place.
So that's my goal for the week. I'm on day 3 of it, and yesterday he not only managed to get both naps on time (both of which were at least an hour!), he also fell asleep 2 hours earlier than usual. AND he slept for 3 hours in a row, then put himself back to sleep without crying or being picked up for another 2 hours. I had to check him to make sure he was still alive, because it's only the 3rd time he's ever gone 6 hours without eating.
The next step is either actual sleep training or learning to relax enough to cosleep (my current record is 1.5 hours), but I'm not planning to cross that bridge until Torin's acclimated to the new bedtime.
Maybe they're right? Maybe a very early bedtime is the answer? Wish me luck.
*The only reason I'm still relatively human is because Ryan makes sure I get sleep in the mornings whenever he has a day off.
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