Since the day Baby MPB was born he loves to sleep. So, we have never had to sleep train Baby MPB.
He goes down for his naps and for bedtime rather easily, and maybe one night a week he’ll cry a bit until he puts himself to sleep. His one crutch is his pacifier/soother, he basically needs that to fall asleep at night peacefully (we are already dreading the day we have to take it away from him).
He loves sleep so much that to this day at 6:00pm we have to pull every trick in our book to get him to stay awake until 7:00pm. (And often we fail and he falls asleep at 6:30). His little body just loves sleep and he obviously functions better when he has his sleep. I’m not complaining, I truly think his love for sleep has helped keep our house somewhat sane while Mr. MPB and I are both attempting to work and deal with our crazy schedules.
Anyways, we’ve been experiencing a particular problem for the last month of so – at 3:00am (or 5:00am on a good day), Baby MPB wakes up screaming. Inconsolably screaming.
We’ve tried every single thing we can think of, including the Ferber method, the plain old cry it out method, etc. But, I’ll admit at 3am, it’s rather hard to patiently wait for him to calm himself down and fall back asleep. And honestly, there seems to be a point that we realize he simply isn’t going to be able to calm himself down. The only thing that is working is snuggles and a bottle. Then he goes back down until sometime between 6:00am and 7:00am. (This 3:00am wake up isn’t as big of a deal for Mr. MPB, he can go right back to sleep. Me on the other hand, I don’t. Lately my sleep pattern is 9:30pm until 3:00am, then I’m up for the day. But I digress, my sleep problems are actually not the point today).
What’s frustrating is that any other time during the night that he wakes up he is able to self-sooth and put himself back to sleep. But this 3:00am wake up is a a full on catastrophic meltdown.
I am honestly not convinced that he’s hungry. I think he’s just using the bottle to calm himself back down.
I just don’t get it. Any ideas?
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This last weekend was Thanksgiving in Canada. We realize we have many things to be thankful for this year, and so we enjoyed the long weekend even though it was marked by miserable weather and this years first snow fall.
I was thankful that we took 4 solid days off work – we needed the break! We also had friends staying at our house for the weekend and we also drove over 8 hours over 2 days to visit with my family. It was crazy and yet fun.
We decided to spend a night at my parents and when we arrived they gave Mr. MPB and I our very first night out without Baby MPB. It was delightful. But if I’m honest, it was also incredibly strange. We talked about him all night long and we even bought him a little something while we were out! Our first night out and both of us were obsessed with being away from our little guy, being a parent sure has changed us!
We also met our new niece at the family thanksgiving dinner. I really wish we’d been able to meet her earlier, but our insane schedules have just not accommodated a 6 hour drive. So rather then putting more pressure on ourselves to do yet another thing, we decided to just wait for thanksgiving when we were all going to be together anyways. She really is the sweetest little thing. As Mr. MPB held her, in front of a room of people I looked over at them and simply said I could have another. Mr. MPB laughed and said, Yes who wouldn’t want a sleeping baby, too bad it’s not that easy for us. Neither of us said anything more, as we had previously made the decision not to tell our families about the possible embryo adoption at this point in time.
I have to admit what I loved about his response is just how right he is – having another child will be hard for us, even in light of the embryo adoption. He spoke the truth and he wasn’t afraid to acknowledge it in front of a room full of people. I appreciate that we are both now able to have that conversation and that we don’t hide our infertility, it’s liberating in so many ways.
That said, we have chosen not to discuss the amazing embryo adoption opportunity with any of our family just yet. We don’t really want opinions of people who don’t understand to influence our decision and we don’t want people to get their hopes up that we’ll have a second child. We just don’t need that pressure. If we chiose to proceed we do plan to tell our families at an appropriate time.
But, I will admit that the added bonus of our 8 hours of driving is that we did have a lot of time to discuss the possibility. We talked every comment I’ve received on my blog so far, we discussed things we still don’t understand and need to learn more about (i.e. Canadian laws), we talked about when we’d want to try for another (if we decide to), we discussed the chances of success and even the potential costs of all of this. We also discussed gestational carrier vs. my uterus. Honestly, 8 hours in a car is a long time. So when we were singing the wheels on the bus we had lots of time to talk! And somewhat surprisingly we are pretty in-line with each other on most things. So, while we haven’t made a final decision I think it’s safe to say we have definitely progressed in our thinking from this time a week ago. I’ll be sure to share more in the coming days/weeks as we work through all of this.
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