"Sleep Coaching"

Tonight starts night one (well, two, sort of...I wussed out last night because I missed the snuggles) of sleep coaching Annabelle. I'd say sleep training, but that evokes all sorts of negative emotions and crazy debates and arguments between people, so I'm not using that terminology.

As of right now, here is Annabelle's sleep schedule on most nights:
6:30 - bathtime, lotion, pjs, play/book, prayer, nurse and rock to sleep.
7:30 - assuming she is soundly asleep, I put her down in her crib.
8:30 - Annabelle wakes up fussing and trying to sit up or crawl in her crib. Jason or I go in and rock her or nurse her back to sleep, then put her back down. This takes about 10 minutes most times.
9:30 - Annabelle wakes up fussing again. The same thing as above takes place.
10:30 - Repeat. We usually get about an hour and a half out of her at this point.
12:00 - Repeat. I am sick of it, so I bring her to bed with me. She nurses to sleep laying down.
1:00 - Nurse, half asleep.
2:00 - Nurse, half asleep.
5:00 - Nurse, nurse, nurse, nurse, nurse, basically with about 15-30 minutes of sleep between each nursing time, until it's time to wake up. I am desperately trying to stay as asleep as possible during these quick nursing sessions.
6:45-7:15 - somewhere in this range is when she is up for the day. Chipper, perky, crawling all over us and attempting to poke out our eyes and yank our lips off of our face. Jason and I both groan and attempt to wake up, arguing over who got the least amount of sleep, and who gets to take a hot shower first.

I will be the first to admit that I "created" this "problem." I wanted breastfeeding to go well so badly that anytime she woke up when she was a newborn, I nursed her. She fell back to sleep, of course, so now she associates sleeping with nursing. It's not a bad sleep association, in fact it's a great one! But, unfortunately, I can't sleep all day to make up for her constant nursing and waking at night. When she nurses at night, she's not nursing for food most of the time. She nurses enough to get a let down, nurses through it, and then falls immediately back to sleep. She's just nursing for comfort and because that's how she knows how to fall back asleep.

Pros of this:

• I love cuddling with her and being close to her at night. 
• I love knowing that she's fine, breathing, and safe next to me. (We practice safe co-sleeping, don't worry!)
• I love that she loves it. 
• She's my precious baby and I want to snuggle with her as much as I can!
• I don't have to get out of bed when she wakes up hungry, and can sort of sleep through most nursing sessions.
• Since I nurse her all night, I still haven't gotten my fertility back, and have no signs that it's coming anytime soon (yeah!!)

Cons of this:

• Jason and I are paranoid she is going to wake up 99.9% of our evening.
• We can't leave her in the evening.
• We can't do anything for more than about 30 minutes at a time, because she will wake up shortly.
• I can't really get up in the middle of the night without her waking up or at least stirring.
• She's in our bed all night. Let's just be honest--this makes spontaneous intimacy impossible.
• She is not getting good sleep! It isn't healthy for a baby to be waking up every single hour.
• I am not getting good sleep! I can't remember the last time I slept more than a couple of hours without waking up. Seriously. I think it was probably October of 2010, before I was pregnant. Wow.

So, obviously there are positives and negatives to her current sleeping situation. But, we promised each other we would make our marriage our number 1 priority, even after having kids. Right now, that is nearly impossible since we basically take turns all evening long getting her to sleep, or we are sleeping with a baby in our bed. We don't go out since the bedtime process starts at 6:30, and we don't get many "dates" even in our house since we are fussing with her all evening long. We have decided that it's time to start weaning her of co-sleeping and all-night nursing. (This does NOT mean that I won't feed her at night. We aren't night weaning her completely.)

The plan:

Bedtime routine goes down as usual. Jason does bath, we read and pray together as a family, and then I nurse her to sleep and put her down. After that, Jason's the one "on call" until we go to bed around 10:30 or 11. He will get her when she wakes up each time and get her back to sleep. Before we go to bed, I will nurse her. Then he's on duty again until 2 or 3, at which point I'll feed her again. We're okay with a little bit of crying in his arms, but we are not leaving her to cry it out alone. If she starts getting too upset or cries in his arms for more than 5 minutes straight, I will go in and get her back down. This plan is loosely based on the No Cry Sleep Solution book, as well as Dr. Sear's Sleep Book. Annabelle will not be scarred for life (repeat over and over and over to myself) if she doesn't get to nurse back to sleep each time she wakes up. She WILL learn, however, that she can go back to sleep on her own. At least, that's the plan. Our hope is that after a week or so of this, she will start sleeping in longer chunks, knowing that she won't get the boob each time she wakes up. 

Pray for us.