Pretend you're a professional baker and get ye some SAF bread yeast!!!

Ok, I feel pretty dumb.

My bread machine book says to use SAF yeast (which is what bakeries tend to buy in bulk), or regular bread machine yeast if you can't find it.  I have just been using Fleishman's bread machine yeast 'cause I couldn't find any SAF in the grocery store, and never thought to look it up online.  Until now.

I received 2 of these.  It's not a brick, it's just vacuum-packed.

The comparison:


SAF from Amazon.com:  2 pounds is $11 (so 4oz is $1.375).  You use 2 tsp per loaf (and 4oz = 48tsp), so you get 24 loaves for 4oz.  Cost:  $0.06 per loaf.

Fleishman's:  4oz is $8.  You use 2.5 tsp per loaf, which gets you 19 loaves.  Cost:  $0.42 per loaf.

6 cents per loaf vs. 42 cents.  SAF wins!  At 3-4 loaves/doughs per week, this convenient change saves me about $70 in just bread yeast in a year. 

If you were to bake 2.8 times a month on average, you'd easily use up the 2 pounds in 5 years.


There's no competition.
 
Considering how much bread (and pizza dough, and pastry dough, etc) I am making, enough to buy my flour at Costco to stick in a 5-gallon bucket, 2 pounds of yeast is not too much.  For people like me (as opposed to a professional baker who leaves it at room temp and uses it up quickly), the yeast is supposed to be kept in the freezer, where it stays just as potent for 5+ years, but I would use up the 2 pounds in a year.  There was enough in a 1-pound pouch to fill a pint mason jar, the empty 4oz Fleishman yeast jar, plus exactly 2tsp for a loaf of bread.  If you don't have a bread machine, be aware that it also works just like regular yeast except that you can just throw it into the recipe dry without having to prepare it.

I tried a "Pane Italiano" in the bread machine, and set it to be ready at the time I woke this morning.  Dang... the smell of coffee and fresh hot buttered bread makes me feel like it's a special holiday.  Using a smaller amount of SAF yeast was a success.


Want some? 

Do it.  Get yourself some.  Or heck, if you provide an airtight jar of the appropriate size the next time you see me, I will gift you up to a 4oz sample. 

A baby's view

Last weekend Ryan and I sat outside in the morning for some coffee and fresh bread*, talking about life and the need to clean up the backyard, and Torin was staring and staring off to the side.

What is so fascinating?

We finally realized what he was staring at... pretty red and green leaves back-lit with sunlight!

Oooooooh...

It was a good morning. 


*I had used the timer on the bread machine for one of the 6-hour french bread recipes to be ready right when we woke up.  The coffee maker has a timer too.  It's like they were made for each other!

Sleep Training Plan: A mix of graduated extinction (Ferber) and no-cry methods

Knowing what I know now, I would have started the plan at 6 weeks of age and then sleep-trained by 3 months (the earliest that the pediatrician recommends), instead of starting at 3.5 months when the horrific 4-month sleep regression hit and then sleep-training at 5 months.  I could have saved myself from SO MUCH sleep deprivation.  I also would have had a video monitor from day 1 so that we could have avoided the night he wedged his head in the crib corner and cried longer than he otherwise would have. 


For the actual sleep training results, see this post.  He got into the swing of things after 4 nights, and never cried more than 22 minutes in a whole night.  By 2 weeks his bedtime, eating schedule, and naps were nearly ideal with no crying at night, and surprisingly he began steadily gaining weight percentiles for the first time.  Thank you for the request to post this info, I had no idea so many people would be interested.



The prep work:

I read a ton of books and online material and mixed in some science to try to develop a plan that felt kinder than tossing him in a room to cry it out.  It was really hard to piece together all the info in the midst of sleep deprivation because my eyes would cross after reading a single paragraph, and I really wish I'd done the research while I was still pregnant!  Torin suddenly couldn't be put down "drowsy yet awake" anymore after 3 months old, when the "4-month sleep regression" hit hard (waking hourly), so I was desperate enough to slog though all the sleep methods.  He began the formal sleep-training exactly 1 week shy of 5 months. 


Here's the plan!


6 weeks before sleep training:

• started using white noise, a loud fan 
• started weaning off the swaddle (one arm out one night, then the other arm the next, until we were doing 2 arms) until he was in a warm sleep sack a week before sleep training
• made his crib fun: lots of tickles/play after each diaper change, plus a long mirror so he could do tummy time with his reflection buddy 
• eased his bedtime earlier (to 9:30 from 1am) with the help of nursing in total darkness
• tried to get him to nap ANY way possible at 10am and 2pm... used a swing friends had just given us. He usually only naps one of those times each day. Still working on this.

3 weeks before sleep training:

• at least 30 minutes spent outdoors before noon so the morning light could help his circadian rhythm.  For some reason this was the hardest to do!  Something about getting out of the house before noon when you're bone-tired just feels impossible. 
• let him toss and turn and mumble at night if he wasn't crying so he could try to get used to putting himself back to sleep. This kid can toss for an hour at a time. 
• weaned him from eating every 2 hours to every 3-4 at night by rocking instead of nursing to sleep right away (eventual goal: 6 hours). 
• started a better nighttime routine involving a book, then diaper change, then baby stretches how my sister demonstrated (he giggles like mad), then massage from toes to head with a calming voice (I try to hypnotize him, haha), then brushing him from head to toe with my hands as I breathe out and picture his wakeful energy draining out his toes (sounds weird, but it calms him), then nursing to sleep in total darkness.

Day 1 of sleep training:

• first night in his crib, using a sound monitor to hear when he wakes. Brought over his fan for white noise, kept room dark.  (Ended up getting a video monitor after finding him wedged in the crib corner one night... in retrospect I would do this from day 1.)
• put him to bed a half hour after he usually falls asleep (pretended the time change didn't happen) so he's in his sleepy zone. Specifically made sure he was awake after nursing so that he was putting himself to sleep instead of relying on me. 
• was going to do Ferber (check on him at 3 minutes, then 5, 8, then every 10 minutes until he stopped crying)... but didn't need to yet.  I do not think he was awake enough after each nursing.
• I'm going to do the naps in the swing until a week from now, then transfer him to the crib once he's sure the crib is for sleeping.
• I put a $10 blue light filter on my ipad (where I record his sleeping and eating notes) to help my body produce melatonin at night.  My computer has the f.lux program which is fantastic for this, but I can't put it on the ipad without jailbreaking the device.  This might indirectly help Torin too.

Following days of sleep training:

• Start inching bedtime upward until 6:30-8pmish, moving 15 minutes every day or two.  His ideal bedtime should reveal itself when he is happy most of the day (aka, not over-tired), going to sleep easily, getting in his naps, and waking on his own between at a stable time which should also end up somewhere between 6:30-8am.  (We are at a good place after 9 days of sleep training, 7:15 bedtime routine, asleep by 7:45-8, 8ish wake time, happy baby all day with 1-2 naps.  Might stay at this later bedtime because 1) Ryan gets to see Torin before bed most nights that he's home, and 2) I like to sleep in.)
• Put him down more and more awake until nursing isn't a sleep association, so it doesn't have to be the last step of the bedtime routine.  (By 2 weeks of training, I don't nurse right before a nap and he goes down mostly easily.)
• Wean him down to eating only every 6 hours at night.  (We are at about 5 to 5.5 hours by 2 weeks of training)

Ferber Results: So much quick success!

It's been 2 weeks, so let's see how it went... 


The brief overview of results

• Night 1:  0 minutes crying
• 2:  15 minutes... first time he's ever slept 10 hours total in a night!!  First time I've slept 4 hours in a row in the last 2+ months, it feels sooooo good.
• 3:  9.5 minutes
• 4:  7 minutes
• 5:  22 minutes (started stretching meals slightly)
• 6:  0 minutes!
• 7:  5 minutes
• 8:  0 minutes!
• 9:  11 minutes... found him completely out of his covers with his arm caught between the crib bars.
• 10:  21 minutes... after going in to find him wedged very tightly in a corner (with his neck bent and arm through the bars and no way to get out) and realizing this was probably why he cried so much, the guilt made me order a video monitor.  Much peace of mind has been had since receiving it.
• 11:  5 minutes
• ... and so far up through day 14, still no crying at night.  Naps, he still cries from 2-6 minutes each.  Last night he hit a record of going almost 6 hours between meals, which is my nighttime goal.

 

Sweet sweet silence and baby sleep.

So far, so good.

As you can see, there was very little crying to be had!  There is actually less afternoon/pre-bedtime crying and grumpiness with his new sleep routine than when I was nursing/rocking him to sleep, so there is no way that I can say that the sleep training was hard on him overall.  I think there was no fuss from him the first night because I nursed him too far into sleep, but he did put himself to sleep the following nights after waking alone.

After getting the monitor, it appears that he does the same amount of twitching or rolling his head back and forth before falling asleep (20 minutes at least), except the difference is that he doesn't complain.  When I was in the room because his cradle was next to my side of the bed, ANY twitching whatsoever would make him wake and scream unless he was in my arms being actively rocked... and if I set him down in the crib when he was not deeply enough asleep, I'd have to start the half hour of rocking over again.  The result is that I get so much more sleep now.  He does too.


Our new normal.

A typical night is that we do the bedtime routine, I nurse him until he's groggy, then I lay him down... it takes 30-45 minutes.  I say goodnight, turn on the monitors and leave, and then without crying he rubs his eyes or sucks his thumb for up to 20 minutes to put himself to sleep.  He wakes at least twice at night with fussing noises, and will either cry for up to 2 minutes per waking and go back to sleep (because it's not time to eat yet) or I go in and feed him.  He wakes in the morning babbling to himself contentedly, and full of smiles. 

IT IS SO AWESOME.

The video monitor is a great help, since my going in to see him makes him cry more... we can put him to bed, turn on the monitor, and watch him sweetly put himself to sleep while we eat dinner.  It is weird having baby-free time for the first time in 5 months, but also a relief because I can decompress at the end of the day. 

In the past 2 weeks we have also gradually changed his bedtime (the moment of falling asleep) from 10:45 to 7:45-8ish.  Starting the bedtime routine at 7:15 and sleeping by 8pm seems to be pretty optimal for him, causing a wake-up of 8ish in the morning plus a day of babbling and easy playing until the afternoon when he needs a nap to refresh him.  The sleep training has been very healthy for his general happiness.

We're also working on naps... generally he gets a 40-minute nap around 3pm, and I'm trying to add in one about 2-3 hours after he wakes in the morning too but he's a bit more resistant.  Wood blinds and heavy curtains have definitely helped, since he sleeps far more easily when it's as dark as possible.


More sleep = better weight gain?

There was also a strange phenomenon starting late on the third night... Torin began drinking from both breasts at nearly every meal.  From his first month, he's always been a one-sided eater no matter what I tried.  Now all of a sudden he is hungry and awake enough to want both, and still eating every 2 hours during the day as usual.  He's also been gaining a percentile of weight every 3 days or so (aka, slightly gaining faster than average) now.

Is this because growth hormone is released in sleep, and now that he's sleeping more and for longer chunks of time, he is suddenly in a growth spurt?  The doctor says he's skinny 'cause he is in the 50th percentile for weight but 100th for length, so I wouldn't mind him getting a little chunkier.


A note for the future.

In retrospect, I should have done the sleep training far earlier, since it would have benefited us both and I would not have reached a breaking point in soul-deep sleep deprivation.  I would have started the 6-week lead-in to the sleep training when he was 6 weeks old, and then done this method of sleep training at 3 months (3 months is also when his pediatrician says it's ok).

Torin was so easy to train either because he has the right personality for it, or because he was developmentally ready, or because the right preparation helped, but this blog post is really for the next kid, to remind me how easy it can be.