Thank you all for all your messages to me about the blog “Somethings Gotta Give”. I’ve had so many people comment on it, mostly privately, that I thought I’d do a quick follow-up. I really appreciate all of you who reached out to me!
I just re-read it and was struck by how clearly sleep deprived I was at the time. That was the toughest time of mommy-hood yet. And while I’m not one to carry around regrets, I am one to share with others what I’ve learned along the way…
First, the choice to add in some formula at that point was perfect for us. It took so much stress off of me, but possibly even more stress off of my husband and probably our nanny. If I’m not around to “make a meal”, they can whip one up themselves. I’m still sticking with breastfeeding through the holidays to help provide some immunities against all the bugs going around, but it is so nice to have more flexibility. Looking back, I’m not sure why this choice was so hard for me to make (sleep deprivation, maybe?).
Second, I really wish I would have read a book or two and had a plan in place before starting “sleep training” for Gus. We will all be just fine, but it would have made the process so much less painful all around. Everyone tells you “oh, you are smart – you’ll just figure it out”. That’s fine on most topics, but I did not find the sleep topic to be intuitive at ALL. For example, wouldn’t you think a child might sleep better if they are more exhausted? Absolutely not. Would it occur to you that if they always slept great wherever they were when they were young that they’d suddenly need specific logistics to sleep well? Not to me. And would you think you could simply move their eating from the night to the day? Didn’t occur to me…
After winging it, backtracking, reading books, implementing a real plan, backtracking due to travel and then getting really consistent, Gus is a champion sleeper. He’s been on a schedule for about a month where he goes to bed at 7 PM, gets a “dream feed” around 11 PM and wakes up at 7 AM. He absolutely LOVES to sleep, just like mama and daddy… yeah!
