I've come a loooong way

Yesterday afternoon I went to the afternoon session of the Baby Sense workshops, for older babies.

In South Africa, the Baby Sense range is like a parenting "bible" - they have Baby Sense, Sleep Sense, Toddler sense and Feeding Sense. And, of course, a whole range of lovely, but very expensive products.

"My" Dr S (the kids' paed) is a co-author of the Feeding Sense book which has just been released.

Of course I own the first two and will definitely be getting Toddler Sense and if the kids start messing about with eating again, probably the Feeding Sense one too.

They are all excellent. A tiny bit woo-woo, definitely no crying it out but on the whole, good common sense when you think about it.

Anyway...

It was almost exactly 6 months ago that I went to the Parenting Workshop where Sister Lillian spoke and set me free about the sleep thing.

Yesterday when I was listening to the sleep session, I honestly didn't learn anything knew but this is due to the fact that I own about 10 sleep books so I'm an unwilling sleep expert.

BUT... as she was talking I thought, "I can't believe we've come this far!"

They were 8 months then and I do believe they started sleeping through (by my high standards) at about 9 - 10 months.

If someone had told me when I was first pregnant or when I'd just had the babies that I'd go through 10 months of sleep deprivation, I'd probably want to shoot myself.

Seriously.

I honestly the bad part was from 6 - 12 weeks and then it was plain sailing after that.

HA!

I still think mostly everyone is lying about how great it all is because when I probe, I find out the truth.

Just the other day, I had a chat with a mother of a 4-year-old and an 11-month-old. She is new to our team. She said they STILL wake up at least twice a night, once with each child, on a good night. On a bad night, it's likely once every hour from 11 pm.

I actually shuddered.

BUT she said she does realise that even though they're so sleep deprived, this is the best time of their lives as the bigger the kids get, the bigger the problems get. Oy!

There was a time when I thought the babies would actually NEVER sleep properly. Kind of like that scary feeling us infertiles have when you think, "oh my WORD, I'm never going to have a baby. I can't believe this is my life"

I don't know quite what it was that switched the trigger to "good sleep" - the babies growing up, me relaxing, us being consistent with our routine or God finally deciding to smile down on us? Maybe a combination of all 4?

I'm just so glad that it has happened.

P.S. some trivia from the seminar -
35 000 babies were surveyed across South Africa and 41% of those have regular sleep problems - either going to sleep or staying asleep.

Sleep update!

Sadia and I were writing emails behind the scenes and she said it seemed like I'm not as bothered by the babies' sleep anymore.

That's true!

They're 5 days away from 11 months and every month it does actually get better.

Of course I never DREAMED I'd wait this long for my precious sleep. Why do people lie about this stuff?

Once you actually start talking about it, it seems like 7 out of 10 people at work are not sleeping because of small children.

Just today I spoke to a lady at work who asked after the twins (we'd chatted before about my infertility when we were about to embark on IVF2) and I said, "just 4 months ago we were still waking up 3 times a night PER BABY".

She went white and was horrified. Maybe at the thought of twins?

(I also happen to know she's about to start IVF for number 2 - a little birdie told me)

At the weekend I read through my goals inside my wardrobe and under "babies" I had 5 points and all 4 are done except for "sleeping through the night".

The sad thing as I said to D was that I honestly believed the hype from other mothers - "oh it will happen at 12 weeks" then "at 6 months" and so on.

And then I'd hope every month - maybe by 7 months? 8 months?

!

Sister Lilian's workshop calmed me down but I'd by lying if I said I was 100% fine with them not sleeping through as I believe it should happen (12 hours a night).

However, these days it doesn't bother me as much.

You know how I know that?

I looked on the summary page of The Notebook and saw I hadn't even bothered to complete it for about 10 days.

Seems Sister Lilian was right - if you stop focusing on the bad stuff, you stop the stressing about it.

But being the type of person I am, I then did all my calculations and whatnot.

I just did the last bit to round out the month and...

Kendra

• slept through twice
• woke twice per night three times
• and only woke once the rest of the month

Connor

• slept through four times
• woke twice per night twice
• and only woke once the rest of the month

The once a night wakes are very late - from 3:30 - 4:30 - which, as you know, is 10 - 11 hours from their last feed as mine go to sleep early so I can relax at 6pm sharp with a mug of tea and The Bold and The Beautiful.

It's the small things in life.

They have stabilised a lot. And I'm very grateful because I get about 7 hours sleep a night.

What's the deal with this sympathy crying though?

When one wakes crying, 95% of the time the other wakes too and starts crying. Why????

They do this sympathy crying during the day too.

Kendra more so than Connor but he does it too.

At first I was confused but now I just laugh at them. And I try to ignore the sympathy crier.

I know, mother-of-the-year material :)

But sometimes they do stop so it does work.

Back to middle-of-the-night feeds...

With the sympathy crying/ waking, we're so sleepy we just plop a bottle in the other's mouth too.

I have these fancy plans of just putting a dummy back in. But it only works when I'm properly awake. All bets are off once we go to bed.

And not to be Pollyanna-ish about it, but really, how can I complain about getting up for 10 minutes a night to pop a bottle in two babies' mouths and get the next set ready?

I do complain when I don't fall asleep in a flash again though.

I realise again and again that food has little to do with sleep as there have been days when the babies refused their meals and still slept exactly the same as the days when they eat really well.

I know no-one else's angels eat badly but this is our new thing, just to keep us on our toes. A whole 'nother post.

P.S. Let's pretend I didn't write this post as I don't want to jinx things now that they're 90% there.

Sister Lilian on sleep

So I went to a Living and Loving (South African parenting magazine)/ Pampers workshop two Saturdays ago.

I try and keep my expectations low so that I'm not disappointed in the speakers, etc.

I even said to my coach, "all I want out of the morning is to spend some girl time with my friends and if I learn something, GREAT!"

Well, I learned a whole lot of somethingS AND THEN SOME.

We had wonderful, wonderful food.... always a good sign, a goodie bag full of wonderful things, a 6-month subscription to the magazine (that, by itself is worth the cost of the workshop) and all in a beautiful venue.

that's my little black Corsa on the right of the pic

Okay, so I got lost twice - on the way there and then leaving again. I am USELESS with maps but I refuse to get GPS as I believe they're for lazy people. Yes, lazy but punctual people. So I drive with a map book and a highlighter (!) and keep pulling over to check I'm on track.

Anyway, moving along...

The speaker was Sister Lilian, a very well-known midwife and nurse in South Africa. Since the workshop, I've been onto her site and guess what? She sells 15-minute advice sessions for ONLY R50 ($6,50) - bargain!

I'm slow! I just realised I can phone her about the food issues! Yay.

Right, so she's a lot more woo-woo than I am... no surprise there but a LOT of what she said makes a lot of sense.

I'm not going to type out everything she said (although I do have 5 pages of notes - yes, I'm a nerd and I always have a notebook with me) but these are the things I found particularly interesting:

• treat your children as individuals and they'll be their perfect little selves
• find your OWN children's rhythms
• as long as it (whatever it is in the particular situation) isn't harmful or unkind to your babies, it's FINE
• parenting is about survival
• you will be far happier when you take your baby's temperament into account
• if you don't diagnose the problem properly, you can't find a solution.

E.g. don't say, "my baby's not sleeping!"

That's not true.

Say, "my baby wakes 3 times every night and THAT is stressing me out" - the problem is now diagnosed - (1) baby waking 3 times and (2) your stress.

Also, she said people don't tell other people (it's that secrecy thing again) that they got up twice to put dummies (pacifiers) in their babies' mouths, or they had to get up to shush and rock the baby, etc, etc

That's true.

So for the sake of keeping it 100% real, my babies go to bed drowsy but awake, put themselves to sleep and when they do wake, we are up for a maximum of 10 minutes each time, feed the baby, no rocking, and straight back to sleep for me (D sometimes battles to fall back asleep).

Not bad.

The title of her presentation on sleep was called Sleepless in South Africa.

Isnt' that great?

We discussed how the "sleeping like a baby" thing is actually a myth. The only people who sleep like babies are:

1. earth mother types - I am not one of these
2. pleasantly plump babies who love food, easy-to-please, placid, calm dispositions, etc. - in Baby Whisperer terms, sounds to me like Angel babies

The things I took away about sleep (there were much more):

1. a relaxed mother equals a relaxed baby (or babies, as is our case), hence the Zen-ness, Saffy :)
2. don't ever disturb the core sleep (first long stretch of sleep) with dream feeds and whatnot (I'd been wondering if I should try and give a bottle at 10/ 11)
3. don't clockwatch (oh I'm an expert at this, can we say *ahem* The Notebook) because you are focussing your attention on the problem and what you focus on, expands. Psych 1.
4. this is only temporary (even if you think it will never end) - LauraC told me once that the only reason I'm obsessed is because I can't see the end of the sleeplessness. If I knew WHEN it would happen, I'd relax. Very, very true. Wise woman, that Laura :)
5. I am not alone. Did you get that? I AM NOT ALONE.

That was the biggest take away for me - I am not alone.

All over Johannesburg there are babies not sleeping. In fact, if your baby is sleeping through, you are in the minority (30%).

Do you know how chipper I was when I heard that?

I swear she set me free.

I could FEEL the weight lift from my shoulders and sat there inwardly smiling the rest of the time.

The MINUTE her presentation ended (there was time for Q & A afterwards) I RUSHED to her to thank her for giving me peace.

Yes, I did.

I would have paid for the entire workshop just to hear that statement.

I am not alone!

I haven't thrown out The Notebook - that will only happen when I can actually remember which baby ate what and I fear that may never be...

And just because I am not alone doesn't mean we stop striving for total sleeping through (I'll post a sleep update in a few days' time) but I now know that actually, my sitation isn't that bad - it's just my bad luck that I am friends with the 30% of people who have babies sleeping through.

Thank God for Caroline, my friend with the twins, otherwise I'd really feel like I was in the twilight zone.