Landen’s sleep story part 1
If you’ve been here since the beginning, and you read my first intro post, you may remember that I am not like other sleep consultants who entered the field after they experienced sleep deprivation with their babies. In fact, many sleep consultants became sleep consultants after hiring one themselves.
I was determined to know everything there was to know about sleep BEFORE my baby was born, and I was planning on sleep training from birth (no you cannot expect your baby to sleep all night without a feed at birth but you can lay a foundation for the coming months).
Breastfeeding and sleep
Landen’s story actually starts a few months before he was born.
Eric and I went to a breastfeeding class at the hospital we *thought* Landen would be born at. I went into this class with a somewhat open mind. Eric didn’t really think breastfeeding would be my thing (spoiler: he was right). I thought maybe I would give it a try but I wanted to learn more. When we walked out of the class everything flipped. Eric said something along the lines of “wow there are so many benefits, maybe you should give it a try,” and I walked straight to the closest trash can and threw out all of the information and pamphlets we got.
I don’t remember what it was exactly, or really anything that was said in that class almost 6 years ago, but I remember feeling like sleep and breastfeeding could not both happen (by the way, I now know that sleep and breastfeeding are both possible simultaneously but as a new mom I didn’t see how it was possible). I chose sleep that day and committed myself to not breastfeeding.
And then my water broke…
Fast forward a few months and I’m up in New York (we lived in Baltimore at the time) for a bridal shower, family time, and some other events, and I’m 34 weeks pregnant peacefully sleeping when I wake up at around 1 AM to pee.
And then I kept peeing.
And then I couldn’t stop peeing.
And then I started pacing back and forth nervously as I realized I was not peeing.
And then I woke up Eric and told him I thought my water broke and started crying.
We took part 1 of a birthing class before this (pregnancy didn’t last long enough to make it to part 2). The instructor had all of the dads (the class was all mom/dad couples) put their wife’s OB in their phones because apparently according to her he’d be the one to call when I went into labor. How stupid is that? Like I’m all for partners taking on childcare responsibilities but only YOU can answer a doctor’s questions about your body. So yeah, Eric called like he was supposed to and she started asking questions and he was like “uh, um, IDK” and handed me the phone.
So anyway she said OK and you’re 39 weeks? And I said no 34. So she said ok you need to come see me immediately, to which I responded “I can’t. I’m in New York.”
“Get to the closest hospital immediately.”
Cool. Cool cool cool.
So we woke up my sister who was “sleeping” (aka I’m pretty sure she had just drunkenly rolled into bed a minute before) in the next room, got in a cab and headed to NYU.
My little preemie
Landen was born that afternoon at 3:37 PM and immediately whisked away to the NICU.
That’s when I was bombarded with all of the pumping stuff and none of the information. I thought back to the benefits of breastmilk (JK I literally wasn’t given time to think) and decided I wanted to give some to my little NICU baby. So I did what the nurses said and I set my alarm for every 3 hours to pump.
I wasn’t getting any milk. Like. At All. The NICU nurses asked my permission to give him formula that night because I had nothing to feed him.
And then they told me no no no who told you to pump every three hours? That’s why you’re not getting any milk. You need to do it every two hours. So I did.
I still wasn’t getting any milk. I mean yes things were starting to happen but even I knew (with absolutely no experience) that the miniscule drops were not enough to feed even a tiny preemie.
Not only was I not getting any milk, but I wasn’t getting any sleep. And neither was Eric because every fraction of an ounce that I was able to pump had to be given to our baby, so Eric was running back and forth to the hospital at all hours of the day and night to bring my milk.
Landen was getting the majority of his nutrients through an IV, but he had to learn to eat for when he was home, so he couldn’t be discharged until he finished 8 one ounce bottles in 24 hours. The majority of those 8 ounces was formula.
I was up all day and all night pumping and Eric was up all day and all night dropping my negligent amounts of pumped milk off at the hospital where they were mostly feeding formula anyway.
I decided before Landen was born that I would not be breastfeeding because sleep was more important to me and yet I was unknowingly pressured by the hospital to give my baby breastmilk that I honestly couldn’t even make for him. And because of that, I wasn’t getting any sleep.
Yes I was sleep deprived, but no, I didn’t have to take care of a baby. He was being taken care of by the hospital. For those 10 days I pumped around the clock and was able to sleep between pumping because I didn’t have a baby to take care of. That is the key here. This would not have been possible if Landen was home with me.
I never breastfed, and I never pumped again
I do not do well without sleep (which is why Eric said he didn’t think breastfeeding was for me). I know this about myself and I knew that breastfeeding did not fit into my plan for many reasons. Yet Landen came way too early in a city he wasn’t supposed to be born in and I was totally thrown off, overwhelmed, and unknowingly pressured. The minute I was told Landen was ready to be discharged was the same minute I got rid of my pump and all other pumping/breastfeeding supplies. As soon as it was time to bring Landen home, I was going to get him on a schedule and teach him to sleep through the night as soon as possible.
But things still didn’t go as planned
Everything that I had read told me I was supposed to feed my baby every 3 hours, and then he was supposed to have play time, and then he was supposed to nap for 2 hours and then I was supposed to feed him again, and on and on in an endless cycle of eat - play - sleep. It would be easy! The hospital had Landen on a 3 hour feeding schedule so it’s what he was used to. Not much would have to change.
Here’s a list of reasons this did not work for us:
Landen did not take those magical two hour naps that allowed us to get on that beautiful 3 hour schedule from birth. (Spoiler: most babies won’t magically sleep two hours between every feed).
Landen was premature and was learning to eat at a much slower pace than full term babies. I could not get those ounces in him in the 45-60 minutes he was supposed to be awake. Half the time I couldn’t even keep him awake for those minutes. But he still HAD to finish the ounces, so sometimes that meant 9 or 10 or even 11 feeds a day instead of 8.
Landen had an IV at the hospital. So yes, he was “eating” every three hours, but he was also being fed nutrients and the eating was really just practice. When he was home, the bottle was his only nutrition and he HAD to grow, so if he didn’t finish the bottle he was usually hungry 1-2 hours later.
This is LANDEN’S story. We couldn’t get Graham on a 3 hour feed schedule right away either for totally different reasons. You might not be able to get your newborn on a 3 hour feed schedule right away for your own reasons. You might not want to!
The good news is that within a couple of weeks we did figure out a flow that worked for us, and I’ll talk more about that in my next few posts. But in the meantime, the most important thing I’ve learned as both a parent and a sleep consultant is that a flexible routine is much more useful than a rigid schedule with a newborn for both the baby’s needs and the parent’s stress/anxiety.