This thing about sleep

I have to say that, when it comes to sleep, we are really lucky. Little L is a relatively good sleeper. At least at the moment (touch wood!! I know that everything is a phase and that a phase can be over faster than you can adapt to it – the bad ones but, unfortunately, the good ones as well :-|). Last night, though, he woke up at around midnight and there was no way to make him fall asleep again… It was just too hot and sticky in his room. Even me felt uncomfortable and couldn’t sleep properly.

There’s this funny thing about being a mum and sleep – or rather sleep deprivation. When you have a baby that wakes up frequently during the night, your body seems to adapts to it. Kind of. You get used to getting up every hour or so. Ok, kind of. Of course, I also felt tired when I needed to get up at night to nurse Luca when he was a newborn. But I just did it. It was ok because he needed me. My body seemed to be fine with that. But now, as Luca is older and usually sleeps from 8pm to 8am, I feel completely tired when he wakes up even just once at night. I am not used to it anymore.

Even though Luca has never been a good “napper” (he would do about two naps/day of around 30 min each; only recently, he started to do one long nap of about two hours), he started to sleep through the night quite early. I guess, for the most part, we were just lucky. For the other part, a combination of things we tried to make him sleep might have worked. When I was pregnant, I bought a huge amount of books (did I say that I LOVE books?) about motherhood, about babies etc. Some of them, I read in the train, on my way to work. Every day. Of course, none of these books was a manual for our little Luca. Far from that. But there was one book that stood out. I got the advice to read it from a friend, bought it when I was pregnant but then just couldn’t find the motivation to read it. It didn’t look like the other “how-to-handle-your-newborn” kind of books. No pictures. Few chapters. Written like a novel. It was called “Secrets of the baby whisperer“, written by Tracy Hogg. Honestly, if I can recommend one book, than this is the one. I read it while nursing. Day and night. I don’t want to say that the recommendations Tracy gives regarding how to help your baby sleep are better than others or that we followed them word by word. To be honest, I don’t believe in any baby sleep method. Neither the cry it out method (especially not this one) nor the No cry sleep solution. The truth for our little L (and us) was lying somewhere in between. Every baby has specific needs and it’s the parents’ (very difficult) task to understand them. It’s a process. However, there was something about Tracy’s approach that I liked a lot, especially the general idea of understanding your baby’s needs. She also suggests to have a routine, to structure the baby’s day with a pattern of eating, activity, sleep and some time for yourself (called EASY by Hogg). This really worked for us. Even today, we still follow this pattern.

Since the beginning and for the first 2-3 months, we used a sleep log to understand Luca’s sleeping pattern (see an example of a sleep tracker here). His sleep / nap times gradually became more regular and we could recognize some kind of pattern (by the way, we also wrote down his feeding and activity times and any unusual or new thing that happened during the day; we basically had a table for everything haha but this is probably just because I am a) German ;-P and b) working in job that requires you to be organized). The first weeks with Luca were like an observation phase. He was observing us, we were observing him. It is like that when you meet a new person. You first have to get to know each other.

Moving to Dubai was a huge change for our little monkey and, obviously, also had an impact on his sleep. He didn’t sleep well during the first weeks after our arrival in the desert. But once we had moved from the hotel room to our own apartment, he got used to his new environment quite quickly (mainly thanks to his much loved cot, which we had brought from Switzerland). 

When Luca was five months, however, he suddenly stopped sleeping through the night. He woke up many times during the night. He was crying and there seemed to be nothing we could do to calm him down. I felt helpless. I didn’t understand where this was coming from. In a mums group, I got the recommendation to contact Julie Mallon. A sleep consultant (check out her website www.nurturetosleep.com on your mobile to see the full menu). Honestly, I didn’t even know that there were sleep consultants for babies. I was a bit skeptical at first, I have to admit. But then again, I was ready to try anything to make Luca sleep again. So, one afternoon, when Luca was sleeping I just called Julie. I remember her warm and friendly voice on the phone that made me immediately want to meet her. So, I invited Julie to come to our apartment to talk to my husband (who was even more skeptical then I was) and myself and to meet our little Luca. Even during our first meeting, we knew that Julie would help us a lot. Not only Luca but all of us, as a family. She did not help Luca sleep through the night again. She did help my husband and myself gain the confidence to help Luca sleep through the night again. That’s a huge difference. I can’t recommend her highly enough. She is not only a very knowledgeable and professional lady, but also very calm and caring. In only two weeks, Julie took the time to get to know our little L, to understand his needs at this specific moment and to help us understand them as well. In only two weeks, Luca was sleeping through the night again. Until now (fingers crossed that it will last!).

I think that it is quite hard to understand your baby’s needs, especially when it comes to sleep. And especially as these needs are always changing. It takes time. And patience. And sometimes, it takes some good advice from knowledgeable people. But above all, it takes a lot of love <3

Now, good night.

xxx

Tani