sleep glorious sleep
By annemarie on February 16, 2010 | Filed Under faces & places, guest bloggers
Is there anything more talked about by new mums than sleep? Here guest blogger and local yoyo afficionado Erin Jeffery talks about being a sleep deprived new mum with a lucky twist!
In the last few months of my pregnancy, during the July and August heat wave of ridiculousness, many people asked me how I was sleeping. The answer was always,
“Like s*** – I am really uncomfortable and its REALLY FREAKING HOT”
Every one of these individuals…and I mean EVERY ONE…would respond with,
“Well, you think you aren’t sleeping NOW, wait until the baby comes”
Jerks.
Prophetic, soothsaying jerks.
For the first six weeks of my beautiful son Maxton’s life, he was colicky and incredibly uncomfortable. He would wake up a few times a night screaming in pain, and getting him to sleep in the first place was a herculean feat. Once he was six weeks and a day however, he started sleeping through the night, like a tiny little angel.
Ah, bliss I thought.
Remember what your mother used to say about counting chickens?
When the beautiful boy turned 4 and a half months old he started waking up every 2 to 3 hours…ravenous. Or cranky…or needing a cuddle.
Just…not…sleeping.
We read books. Many of these books gave us advice that lead us to believe we were horrible parents and had broken our son. We talked to friends. Many of them recommended the aforementioned books. It was an endless cycle of insanity.
My husband and I decided that sleep was for the weak, and really, life is better slightly sleep deprived. The fuzzy haze gives the world a kind of shiny look.
And of course, we aren’t alone. Everyone with an infant has some kind of sleep issue. And everyone looks for some kind of magical solution.
Imagine our delight when we discovered the Rocky Sleep Study.
This study, being run out of UBC is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research funded project. It is currently recruiting families with babies between five and a half and eight months old who have sleep troubles (wake two or more times a night). And, importantly for us, it doesn’t involve letting the babies ‘cry it out’.
We signed up in a heartbeat.
This study provides the parents involved with much needed information and resources to help them teach their infants to soothe themselves to sleep. Additionally, the data gathered during the study will be used to show whether how important sleep resources are to new parents in BC, and hopefully will pave the road for training for public health nurses across the province.
Our involvement is simple. Starting in March, we will be visited by a research assistant who will provide us with a motion sensing bracelet for our son to wear for six nights. He or she will also ask us some baseline questions about fatigue, mood and what we are currently trying to do to help Maxton sleep. After all the baseline information is gathered from the bracelet and our questionnaire, we will be randomized into one of two study groups.
We look forward to providing more information on this study as it continues.
But more importantly, we are really looking forward to getting some sleep.
Erin is a new mom of a giant baby named Maxton. She has developed a new passion for lifting heavy, squirming things. She also enjoys exploring the city with baby in tow, writing, all things ‘yo’ and discovering new things through the eyes of the worlds largest baby.
I heard about this study…looking forwards to hearing how it works out for you. We used Dana Obleman’s program http://www.sleepsence.net it worked for us.
Also, FINALLY, someone else who understands what it was to be so heavily pregnant during the heat wave last August!
Great blog post.
I thought I managing in my sleep-deprived state until the day I found frozen peans in the junk drawer.