Lessons from Hannah

The pictures are of Hannah's first pigtails. I love this dress and someone at church called it a Cinderella dress, which I thinks fits how I feel about it.  However, that's not what I want to write about, the pictures just makes this post entertaining.

What I really want to focus on is Hannah's sleeping issues. She has been our worst sleeper ever and I'm not sure how this even happened.  About two months ago, Hannah just stopped sleeping well.  This started after we can home from my parent's house and I think even after Hannah's last seizure (July 16th).  At first it was nap time that got difficult.  She would scream in her crib for a long time (20 minutes and more) and when she fell asleep, she wouldn't sleep for long.  I remember that she had a few weird days of doing this at my parent's but I thought it was a fluke. 

So, to help her calm down, I would rock Hannah to sleep, then move her to her crib.  Soon enough, Hannah didn't want her crib at all and was very difficult to transfer over so we ended up both taking a nap in Robert's bed (the rocking chair is in Robert's room).  Sometimes, I was able to sneak out and she would sleep longer.

I'm not sure how long this lasted until it also effected bedtime sleeping.  Whenever we put Hannah in her crib, she would cling on making it very difficult to put her down in the first place and then would scream a horrifying scream for 30mins-1 hour.  At that point, I would pick her up and spend several hours trying to have her fall asleep and go back in her crib.  Both Hailey and Robert had a period of time where they had to cry it out but within a short time they could put themselves to bed without any problems. 

I noticed that Hannah jerked a lot while she was asleep, so we thought maybe increasing her medicine will help (it did not just made her crankier).  This is also what lead me to take Hannah to a chiropractor.

Nathan has no patience for crying babies and took over one night. His plan was that she she was going to scream, then she could scream all she wanted downstairs in the porta crib. Then she will see her crib wasn't that bad.  It was a horrible night and eventually out of exhaustion, Nathan gave up and I spent 5 hours in the middle of the night comforting a beyond sleepy baby.  That's when I gave up on the cry it out method.  I promise you that Hannah is here to teach me that each kid is different and what works for one kid will not work for the other even though the have the same jeans. 

So, I read the no-cry baby sleep solution book.  I read that book as fast as I could and didn't find too many helpful hints.  They mentioned that naps are essential to a good night sleep, to have a routine, and that putting a baby to sleep earlier is better than later. We were already in the practice of those things and most of the other suggestions didn't work because of Hannah's age (they focused on infants). One thing that I liked out of the book was you only change what bugs you.  I realized that I do enjoy rocking Hannah to sleep and I'm okay with staying in her room until she falls asleep. I think by this point, we switched Hannah's crib out for the toddler bed. We were not planning on doing this until she was 3 years old like Hailey and Robert, but it was seemed to me she was just terrified of her crib and I hoped a toddler bed would work.

Now that she was in a toddler bed, I would spend an hour to an hour and a half either on the floor by her bed or just outside the door for night time.  For her naps, I just slept in Hailey's bed with the door closed while Hannah would most of the time sleep and sometimes just wondered around the room.  One time during nap time, when I was on the floor next to her bed to keep her in bed so she would sleep, I started dozing off before she did.  Next thing I knew, Hannah was throwing me her pillows, giving me her blanket, and putting her pacifier in my mouth.  It was like she was saying, "It's okay mom, you sleep, I'll play downstairs with Hailey and Robert."  *Side note-we also tried getting her hooked on a pacifier to see if that would help, but it didn't)

Also keep in mind that even after I just spent 1 - 1 1/2 hours putting Hannah to bed, she still got up about 2-3 times in the middle of the night and would take up to 30 minutes to fall back to sleep with me laying outside her bedroom door.

After a month of this (and my due date coming up quick) I started not liking what needed to be done to put Hannah to sleep.  So we pushed back her bedtime 30 minutes later and turned her bed around so her head is right next to the door.  This worked for two days and I only had to stay outside her door for 30 minutes.

Finally, I found the solution to Hannah falling asleep that has worked for 3 days now.  Hannah's toddler bed is right next to Hailey's (Hailey is okay with this). We have a noise machine going (generally on cricket sounds by Hailey's request) and I have the gate up.  I stay outside her room for 5-10 minutes (while she gets out of her bed every 30 seconds to see if I'm still there).  Then, with the room still open and the gate still up, I leave and start my night activities.  Hannah now just cries for 5 minutes then goes back to bed and falls asleep.  So basically we are back to the cry it out method but this time it is working.

I'm starting to do this same routine of having the gate up and only staying outside her room for 5 minutes during nap time too, and am getting good results. (Today was the first day of changing her nap routine).

However, she still wakes up in the middle of the night. Last night, she woke up at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 6:00, and then was up for good at 7:00am.  Hannah generally comes into my room and quietly wakes me up. Then I go put her back into bed, cover her up, sometimes gives her water (I just stopped getting her milk because it took too long with needing to be refrigerated), waits outside the door for maybe 5 minutes, then I have to go potty myself, check on her one last time to make sure she's asleep, and finally am back in bed.  This takes about 15-30 minutes.  I want to see what she will do if I keep the gate up and let her cry it out (with certain time limits before I go in). The problem is that the system we have now only wakes up me, but letting her cry could wake up everyone then we would have more cranky people on my hands.  I know Hannah's not getting enough sleep because she is super fussy most mornings.  She won't do two naps anymore and I need a break in the afternoon, so her one nap has to be after lunch. 

This has been a tough challenge and mystery that I feel like I'm close to solving.  I hope within the next two weeks, I can have the night wakes stop.  The baby is due in less than 5 weeks now.  I really don't mind waking up with kids since I usually get a nap in the day but I don't think I could handle both Hannah and a nursing newborn waking at the same time.

One more thought about sleeping is that as I type this out, I think "Wow, I've had a lot of patience with her!"  I think I developed this type of patience with Hannah because I remember staying in the hospital with her a year ago, hoping she'll wake up.  What was truly important to me during the hospital changed to the health of my kids.  The house can always get cleaner later, a shower can be missed here and there, but this time that I have my babies will never come back and I want to treasure each stage that they go through.