My two favourite things are sleeping and watching films. Unfortunately I went through a period which lasted 2-3 years which actually combined the two. I love the cinema and I love sleeping but in no way do I recommend mixing the two together. I would see trailers for films I really, really wanted to see. I would pay the money to go to the cinema. I would spend the extortionately marked up prices on bags of M&M's or Minstrels and the even higher marked up drink prices -for drinks that really don't taste good, (syrup mixed with carbonated water is not the same as an actual tasty, refreshing drink, although it still rots your teeth.). I would get roughly half way into the film and then the sleep would attempt to descend. I say "attempt" because it really was only the initial, testing attack. An exploration to see what kind of enemy it was up against before launching the full attack. I fought this with all my power. I would have many uncontrollable head nods, (this also happened to me once in a meeting with a client - not surprised I didn't stay in that job long!). I would shift in my seat, I would take a sip of the sickly fake Fanta, I would shake my head, I would do everything I could to show that threatening sleep that it's attempted attack was pointless and it should try someone else. Ultimately though I would fail and I would fall asleep. Now, it is difficult to say how long I would sleep for - after all I was asleep, not clock watching. I would soon discover though, once the film had finished and the post film discussion would leave me confused. The problem was, most of the time lost was actually during the initial attack and not the victory. I would actually only sleep for probably 10 mins but would fight it for at least half hour. If I just laid down and let the sleep monster take me straight away I would have only lost a brief amount of the film going experience. Once I learnt that I was completely cured. It has now been a long time since I fell asleep at the cinema.
What has this got to do with being a new mum? Well, sleep is a hot topic among all with babies. Those little "bundles of joy" seriously know how to mess with your sleep. Margaret Thatcher famously boasted that she only needed 5 hours when she was Prime Minister. I, on the other hand, am at the opposite end of the scale. I need a minimum of 8 hours. I could easily sleep for 12 hours and have been known to go for 14. I'm a professional sleeper. Jon is rubbish at it. He'll wake up at the weekend around 7.30am - so slightly later than a working day - and he'll have to get up. He can't doze. Amazing isn't it? How can you not doze?!? In some ways dozing is better than sleeping. When you're dozing you are consciously aware that you're in bed asleep, you can actually appreciate the act of sleeping and you can influence your dreams. I will become aware that I'm in the middle of a dream and start to really enjoy it. Yep, I've decided, dozing is better than sleeping. But sleeping is still pretty damn good!
When you have a baby, everyone says you have to sleep when they sleep. I don't do that. When The Popster is asleep that is my time to do the dishes, tidy up, shower, do the laundry etc etc. If I slept when she was asleep the house would be a mess, I would really smell and most of all, I would keep getting woken up by The Popster. She doesn't know that I'm asleep and should stay quiet, when she wants to get up she yells. When she wants to eat she yells. When she wants anything she yells. A screaming baby is not my favourite alarm clock, so I sleep at night. And every night, I hope that The Popster is going to sleep that little bit longer than the previous night.
As you all know The Popster is breast fed. It is commonly said that formula fed babies sleep better at night than breast fed babies. The reason for this is formula is harder to digest than breast milk so stays in them longer and they are therefore less likely to wake up in the middle of the night hungry. I get many a young mother look at me with sympathetic eyes when I talk about The Popster waking for a feed at 4am. Formula babies sleep though the night and breast fed babies don't. That's the myth. Yes you heard me correctly. It is a myth. Or more accurately it is a very misleading statement that has resulted in a myth.
First of all, "Sleeping through the night" officially constitutes a baby that sleeps for a 5 hour stretch. So Margaret Thatcher would have a baby that really does sleep through the night, but for me, someone who likes 8 hours minimum and preferably 12 hours, "sleeping through the night" is a bit of a stretch. In actual fact, The Popster has been "sleeping through the night" since she was roughly 6 weeks old. She can do 5 hours. Breastfed babies are just as able to "sleep through the night" as formula fed babies. In no way would I ever call sleeping for 5 hours, sleeping through the night. Until The Popster goes to bed at 6.30pm and stays there until I want to get up the following morning - say 9am, then she is not "sleeping through the night" . Now there's a dream!
I have to get out of bed 2-3 times in the night to feed The Popster slept in the day. Then we watch TV - very important as Sky Plus can only record so much, and we have a lot to get through. I tell you, miss a couple of days of catching up on TV and we run the risk of filling the hard drive up. She then tends to wake around 4am and then again between 7 and 8am. At that final feed, I'm still counting that as night. I don't want to get up then so I put her back to sleep and she goes to sleep for me. So 3 feeds in the night but most people would call that 2. I just need to phase out the 4am one. She is capable of it, a few times we've succeeded, but more often that not she wants a 4am feed. That one is probably the hardest as I'm fast asleep then. At least it only takes 10mins. So I don't think her sleep patterns are that different to the babies that mothers boast about. I'm pretty happy.
The Popsters feeds take around 10mins - longer if she decides to fall asleep half way through but not let go. In this 10 mins I put my head back and doze - often writing in my head a much better blog than I'm managing to do now. When The Popster slept in our bedroom with us and was new the feeds were much more frequent. Invariably, when she woke and cried, I would wake with a jump in a panic. Almost always I would wake thinking I was in the middle of a feed and had fallen asleep and dropped her. Her cry was because she was laying injured, shocked on the floor. I would jump awake and look around for her, before realising I had finished that feed, put her back in her basket and been back to sleep. In those days I never knew what was going on or where I was. I was getting sleep, but I spent a lot of the time slightly delirious. For the record, I did fall asleep whilst feeding many times, but I always managed to keep a grip.
So, I said earlier I'm pretty happy with how The Popster sleeps, and it's true. However, recently she hasn't been sleeping well at all. She wakes in between feeds. She appears to be having problems with wind. She'll wake a couple of hours after a feed crying real tears, drawing her legs up to her chest and farting loudly. Apparently I gave birth to a teenage boy!! This is really hard on us. I say us, most of the time Jon just snores through it all. It does disturb him sometimes though and it makes him very grumpy. When this is happening there is very little we can do. I rub her tummy and give her, her dummy. This works. For somewhere between 10mins and 30mins. The length of time it works for has a direct link to how long it takes me to get back to sleep. If I manage to fall asleep straight away than she'll wake straight away. If I take half an hour than she'll last 31mins. Her timing is impeccable.
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