No Sleep and The Beginning of the End..

I wrote in my 4-month update on Owen that we were 100% breastmilk and that I was SO proud.

That streak is now broken.

Yep, we've introduced formula.

It wasn't an easy decision (even though Austin was almost 100% formula fed, it was still hard to make that decision for Owen)... but it has been on my mind for a few weeks now.

Why?

Because we are dying a slow death of not sleeping.

Let me backtrack..

Literally the day after Owen turned 4 months, he started sleeping horribly. He used to nurse at 8pm, be down until 2-2:30 am, nurse, then be up at 6am. Up ONCE to eat.

Suddenly, he was up twice a night. Then it was three times a night.. Then four some nights... then more some nights...

Then the last few weeks (since  right before Christmas) it has been three times a night (on a GOOD night)... and on a bad night? EIGHT TIMES he was up.

The day after Christmas Neal and I drove home with Owen and I was so tired and so sleep-deprived from the previous weeks that I was physically sick all day. Nauseous, shaky, I couldn't stand up (no, I'm NOT pregnant)... we were cleaning the house and I had to keep lying on the floor to not throw up. My eyes burned, I was not well.

This terrible sleeping has continued... and I'm losing my mind.

I'm not concentrating at work well, I'm snappy and short-tempered toward Austin, I'm a total b**** at 3am to my husband.

I couldn't function on less than 2 hour chunks of sleep (sometimes less), every single night anymore.

Obvious reason for this was the dreaded 4-month sleep regression, right??

I researched it and we tried to just "ride it out..." and we have been for the last month.

Things aren't getting better and we are days away from the 5 month mark and he was getting worse at night.

What was going on with Owen???

So I'm taking a shower Sunday night.. swaying and near tears thinking about how it was almost "bedtime" and I was facing another night of up-every-hour... and it just hit me.

We needed to do something.

We needed to get Owen full, satisfied, settled... and SLEEPING.

I realized my stubbornness to not introduce formula was primarily so I could brag that I was "exclusively breast-feeding."

See, that was a club I was desperate to be a part of when I had Austin and I was denied entry into that club.. so when I finally made it in this time with Owen, I was willing to fight tooth and nail to not give up my membership.

But as I took a shower, I realized my stubborn reason was negatively affecting my entire family.

I was sleep deprived and emotional and bitchy.

Neal was sleep deprived.

Owen was sleep deprived and not sleeping well during the day either

Austin got a Mom who was too tired to play with him, too tired to talk to him, who brushed him away and told him him to go do other things because I needed to sit and be tired.

I was being selfish.

I told Neal that night, I was ready to try formula at night, to see if that would help Owen sleep. I needed to get off my high horse for the sake of my family.

I cried when I gave Owen that bottle, and prayed that I was doing the right thing. We nursed, then he got 2oz of bottle to top him off.

And... it did nothing.

He was up ALL NIGHT Sunday night again. I was nursing every (barely) two hours, and I had nursed every (barely) two hours that whole day too.

What was going on?

We tried it again last night.... he got a 4oz bottle at bed at 7:30, then went down. I pumped an hour later. We got a 3 hour stretch out of him, but he was hungry again.. so I nursed... and he was hungry AN HOUR later. Neal gave him another 4oz bottle and he was HUNGRY AGAIN TWO HOURS LATER.

WHAT THE HELL.

We are also sleep training and encouraging him to self-soothe, sending Neal in the room instead of me, and with all that, Owen did great. But he still wanted to eat three times last night and he RAVENOUSLY ate. It didn't matter if it was bottle or boob... he wasn't getting enough.

Sleep training, proper sleep environment, bottles, boobs... and still no sleep.

And before you think we hadn't tried everything in the past month to get him to sleep.. let me assure you we did. Swaddle, un-swaddle, swing, carseat, white noise, music, bottle of breastmilk, cereal before bed, bath, massage, rocking, stories, warm room, cool room, sheets that smell like me, etc...etc.. etc...

You name it, we tried it.

So another epiphany today... and I don't know why I hadn't thought of this.. but Owen isn't eating enough during the day.

He's back-loading at night because he's so hungry. It all seems so simple and so clear now.

He gets 4oz bottles at daycare, and nurses in the morning, evening and weekends. Even though he isn't crying or unhappy after his bottles... I don't think he is full. This 4oz is enough to make him not hungry.. but not full either.

That would explain the every (barely) 2 hours of nursing we've done all weekend long for the last few weeks. And the eating all night long.

I looked up how much a 5 month old baby should eat.. and read it was most common to be at 5-6oz. Some even were at 8oz.

My boobs are not making that much.

I knew this day would come... I am not a big milk producer, and I knew we'd hit a day where Owen needed more from me than I could produce... that day is here.

My decision to start supplementing, is then, (I believe) the right decision for us.

If I didn't work outside the home, I'd be more than willing to nurse on demand.. but pumping at work, and trying to squeeze out enough for his (now bigger) bottles.. that's stressful. I already have panic attacks on days I don't pump as much as I think I should.

I realize that supplementing is most likely the beginning of the end of nursing.. I'll slowly produce less I'm sure.. and part of me is sad, and part is ok with that.

I made it way farther than I did with Austin, and farther than I thought I would when I was pregnant with Owen. He got almost 5 months of nothing but milk from me. Now he needs more, and Momma needs some help.

My freezer milk with help, but it won't last forever... and I plan on nursing on the weekends and mornings and evenings for as long as I can.

So maybe the answer all along was more food.. and it just took me a month to realize that.

Let's hope that the bigger bottles and the bit of supplementing after nursing will help settle this little one better.. .sleep a bit better and we can all get back to feeling normal and not near-zombies.

Here's hoping for better nights, and better days in the near horizon...

Austin Rewind- All His Sleepy Ways

It's Austin's birthday week!

That means I am especially allowed this week to share any stories I want of how adorable, amazing and funny my little man is!

Really, I just want to photo-dump on all of you because I've been going through my archives and have found so many pictures I have never shared, so there will be several of these type of posts happening this week!

Today we visit all the sweet and funny ways little Austin has caught some ZZZZ's this past year...

It's funny how many pictures I have of a baby who really didn't sleep all that often. Maybe I wanted to capture the miracle of sleep when it did rarely occur.

Or maybe its because Austin was such a weird and funny sleeper I felt compelled to always take his picture while he was snoozing.

Growing is tiring business!!!

700 Hours

That is, on average, how much sleep you lose in the first year of having a baby.

That is 29 days.

So basically, a whole month of sleep- gone.

Like any other new Mom, I am not getting my blissful 8-9 hours of shut-eye a night like I did pre-baby. Right now I am kicking myself in the ass for all those Saturday mornings when I leaped out of bed at 7am so I could "tackle the day" instead of snoozing and being lazy until noon. What the hell was I thinking???

Oh sure, the advice everyone gives you is great in theory... "just sleep when the baby sleeps." Sounds like a good plan, right? And you spend your pregnancy envisioning blissful afternoon naps with a sweet infant snuggled in your arms, or peacefully asleep in their perfectly decorated nursery.

Ok, I actually had to stop typing there for a second because I was laughing at myself so hard.

In my 4 weeks of parenthood experience, there is no "sleeping when the baby sleeps"... you wanna know why?

Well, for the first week or so you are so worried that your child is just going to stop breathing at any given moment that you just sit there and stare at them the whole time they are sleeping.. making sure their lungs are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

Then, when you finally calm down a little bit about the functionality of their organs... they get a bit older and more mature and just down right stop sleeping so much.

Like our dear little Austin.

Who, on most days, does not sleep during the day for longer than 20 mins every few hours or so.

These so-called "breaks" while he is sleeping are now my highly anticipated bathroom breaks, dishwasher unloading breaks, or my one and only chance to brush my teeth and put on a bit of deodorant so I don't start smelling like the Saturday Market (no offense to all hippies...).

And at night? Well, we have our good nights where he'll let us have a few 3-hour chunks of sleep
(oh the glory of 3 whole hours!!!!) but then we have our bad nights too. You don't want to know about those... you can just take one look at the bags under my eyes and draw your own conclusions.

nnkio  ljoigggnn.... .lmlo?98665??

Oh sorry... that was just me nodding off again... :-)