I have been ignoring about the fact that cub does not sleep through the night (and that cub detests the bottle). I kept hoping he would eventually learn on his own one of these days. But as days go by, as it grow closer to the end of my maternity leave, I’m getting panicky and I wondered if he would ever grow out of this. For us, It’s like a vicious cycle. Cub not sleeping at night would mean more naps in the day and hence more alert at night. Nights are spent feeding the cub every 2 hourly as he demands for milk and fidgets in discomfort. Mum is feeling more tired as days went by. It’s easy for Cub’s pediatrician to state as a matter of fact that cub could be throwing his legs up and acts uncomfortably due to colic. So does this mean there is no solution? It seems doctors are just using the colic reason for everything unexplainable.
Finally 3 weeks left and it seems changes will need to be done so cub can learn how to sleep through the night. But changes mean efforts. For the sleep deprived me, this is lots of efforts. To implement, this would mean more discussions with my mum to undo and to modify the existing routine. (I’m dragging this and praying that she won’t take this the wrong way).
First and foremost, we need to get rid of the early bath timings in order to build sleep routine at night. That is to educate cub to expect sleep after his shower, massage and feed. Once he learnt to expect, he would learn to sleep on his own nightly without struggle. This is in theory.
Secondly, to reduce his daytime naps. I have to admit in the beginning I really thought cub does not sleep enough just like what my mum claimed. I have to highlighted her belief is that babies should just sleep and eat. But today as I monitored, cub has slept like 4 hours in total. He has literally spent the whole day sleeping and feeding without any time for interaction or activity. So we need to work on reducing these day naps to 0.5 hour in the morning and 2.5 hour in the afternoon. From my observations, because he has been sleeping too much in the morning, he end up staying awake in the afternoon and then sleeping in the late afternoon. So no more sleep after 10am and 5pm.
Today is the first day of change. Just as expected, the implementation is painful. Cub became very unsettled without his usual bath. And hence he missed his morning nap. As a result, he became overly tired, more unsettled and hence demands for more comfort sucking. And his grandma starts to question if the new changes are going to work and how her other friends who are caregivers with babies have it easier with no routine. As usual, exchanges were done to and fro about differences between breastfed babies vs. formula babies. By now, I’m tired of having to explain myself over and over again without any success since cub’s grandma seems pretty convinced I’m complicating things by all these strange rules.
Fortunately by the time we were done with his night routine, he was tired and sleepy. At one point, he even drifts off to sleep on the play gym. I even thought happily that yay! Cub is finally sleeping on his own without the usual rocking and it’s only 6:30pm and the night routine works! But the success is short-lived (cub’s grandma was happy and quiet for that moment and I thought I could have my dinner in peace). Yet half an hour later, his hunger woke him up. Since he was drinking so much before, I run out of milk. (Or maybe because I’m too tired by late evening). Next, cub’s grandma attempted to bottle feed him. And so he struggles, he pretends to drink, he threw out all the milk and he bites the teat so no milk can drip into his mouth. As I write this blog at 9:45pm, I could hear his loud crying going on and on in the next room. It pains me but there’s nothing I could do.
All I could do is to tell myself to stay focused on writing this blog and hopefully the TV noise could drowned off all the cub’s crying. And hopefully one week later, I could happily write a blog about how cub is now sleeping through the night.
Snippets from the life of a working mom 