Sawyer is my sweet and cuddly baby. Most of my posts are dominated by funny Ryder stories, but lately, Sawyer has been doing a good job coming into his own. He has a distinctly different personality than Ryder. Whereas Ryder is doggedly determined and only listens to what he wants to hear, Sawyer is happier sitting in my lap or hanging around my neck. As long as he is with me, stuck to me like a band-aid, he is content. He is becoming more independent now that he is getting older and more mobile, but as a whole, he is much easier to handle than Ryder ever was as long as I carry him. He is sometimes bossy, and he is louder than I originally thought he might be; he is even starting to yell "No!" at me, but then he breaks out into a toothy grin and comes running to hug me. All in all, he is loving baby who, for a 21 lb tiny human, can definitely make himself heard. In the daytime, I laugh at his clingy behavior, even smile and think about how special it makes me feel that he is such a mama's boy. But at 2am, the affection and clingyness is starting to be much less "cute."
As a newborn, Sawyer fit into my life and our family with such ease that I joked that at times, I forgot he was even around. I will never forget how stressful Ryder's first few weeks of life were at night. He would get geared up to scream at 10pm and would go until 4am, when he would finally give up. This lasted approximately 4 weeks. Then, all of the sudden, his sleep patterns became much easier. He slept large chunks of the night without waking, and he would even wake up cooing in his crib. Sometimes I would listen to him for 30-45 min before getting him out of bed. As a 1-2 year old, I would literally get Ryder to sleep in mere minutes and then be out of the room to enjoy a bit of free time. I am not saying he was perfect. He would occasionally experience a disrupt in his sleep patterns; once I even let him "cry it out" after a few weeks of noticing he was wanting me to get him up to rock him in the middle of the night for no reason other than comfort. Often times, his weeks of waking numerous times at night or fighting going to sleep would be followed by severely infected ears, which I would realize were his underlying problem. We would get the ears fixed and his sleep patterns would become peaceful again. |
| How I found Ryder when he was Sawyer's age after I let him "cry it out" for a few hours. |
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| How I found Ryder when he was Sawyer's age after I let him "cry it out" for a few hours. |
Sawyer, on the other hand, is a totally different story. He started off better than Ryder. The first night I brought him home he slept 3 hours in between feedings. If you have ever had a newborn, you know this is fabulous. I was so pleased that he really never had any nights of screaming for hours on end that I bragged to everyone about what a great tempered baby he was (and I still whole-heartedly believe that). And unlike Ryder, who never napped in the daytime, Sawyer would sleep for a few hours during the day, giving me an often much needed break to relax myself. This pace rocked along until about 6-8 months.
It is no secret that I am a breastfeeding mamma. I probably have been labeled that nutty holistic mom by my friends who personally do not want to breastfeed past the first few months. I make no apologies for the fact that I support and believe breastfeeding is the healthiest way to nourish a baby. I also support extended nursing. To me, a 2 year old who nurses is normal, not creepy. Sawyer is the poster child for breastfeed babies. Though he is 16 months old, he is still perfectly content and 100% happy to nurse. Many nurslings will self wean when they are ready. This can happen early for some babies and much later for others. For us, Sawyer appears to be no where near ready for that, and I am okay with that. Breastfeeding came easy for both me and Sawyer. I, for one, enjoyed the freedom from bottles and formula and washing and refrigerating, etc. But the biggest reward of nursing was night nursing. I honestly do not know how formula moms have the energy to fix bottles, warm them and then wash them or wake up to a sink full of dirty bottles day after day. Nighttime feedings for a breastfeed baby are, in my own personal opinion based on my own experiences, easy. Baby cries, unbutton shirt, feed baby, go back to sleep. Many nights, especially in the beginning when Sawyer was in the crib beside my bed in my room, my feet never even hit the floor during his feedings. I would tuck him in close to me, feed him, drift to sleep with him, then wake up and move him, sleeping so soundly, over to his crib. It was sweet, calm and peaceful.
When Ryder was a baby, he breastfeed for 6 months. For numerous reasons, I ended up stopping at that point and switching to formula. By this time though, he was sleeping all night, so I never had to warm a bottle or feed him at night. I had evicted Ryder from the crib by my bed by the time he turned 4 weeks old. I was so sleepy and driving myself so silly at night making sure he was alive and breathing that neither of us could sleep. So on the day Ryder turned 4 weeks old, I moved him to his crib in his room. This was also the first night he ever slept the entire night. I swear, I thought he was dead when I jerked awake the next morning and realized I had actually slept. And even when Ryder did wake up, I was much more diligent to rock him and put him back in his bed, no matter how tired I was or how long it took. I was too scared to co-sleep because of SIDS. When Sawyer came around, I was much more comfortable with parenting and was quicker to put Sawyer in bed with me to feed. It made me a much more functionable person in those early months because I could drift off while he ate, and it is probably why he slept so much better than Ryder had in those first weeks. I didn't worry about SIDS or spit up or any of those nutty things that kept me in check when Ryder was born. In fact, one quick realization I had about parenting two children was that when one child wakes, it is very easy to wake (unintentionally) the other child--and let's face it, no parent wants that to happen. This factored into my decision to bring Sawyer into my bed as well. If he ever did cry for any length of time and wake Ryder up, it was much harder for me to manage. Two crying babies can be really tricky.
Fast forward to 16 months old. Sawyer is still in the same pattern of sleep he was in at 7, 8 months old. Another habit I formed was rocking him to sleep at night while he nursed. Usually this was also while Shaun and I spent a few minutes watching TV and enjoying the quiet time together. Now that Sawyer is older, he still will only go to sleep if I rock him. I haven't figured out how to break this habit (other than crying it out). Honestly, I didn't realize I had created this monster until it was created, so to speak. But truth of the matter is, I can handle rocking him to sleep. Sure, there are times when it would be nice to just pop him in bed and leave, but I am okay spending some snuggle time with my baby. It is what follows that is driving me slowly bat %&$* crazy.
Sawyer still wakes up anywhere between 2-4 times a night. Ideally, he would like to nurse when he wakes up (something Ryder stopped on his own after about 3 months old), and even though lately I have been doing good at not giving in (most of the time anyway) to his desire to simply nurse for comfort, I still cannot get him to sleep an entire night through. No lie, he has had approximately 2 full nights of sleep (from the time I put him down until the sun comes up the next day) since July 1. I have been counting. A typical night starts with rocking Sawyer and putting him to bed at 8:00pm, roughly. Usually he goes down easily. I then enjoy some reading and relaxing before I go to bed, typically around 10:30. It never fails, by 11:30-12:30ish, Sawyer wakes up. I know he his simply waking up and then he cannot go back to sleep on his own, but I swear I think he is waking himself up on purpose to catch me not sitting with him so that he can wail at me and make me feel bad and miserable at the same time. I usually get up and rock him or comfort him and then put him back in his bed. This takes anywhere between 20-45 minutes. At about 4:30am (and many times earlier) he will wake again. I again drag myself out of bed and rock him back to sleep. I place him back in his crib, where, half the time, he will pop back up, no matter how asleep he looks, and start crying. If I am really tired, I will just give in and pull him up and take him with me to my room where he will snuggle close to me and happily, knowing he has gotten his way, go to sleep. I am also quick to make this decision because I do not want him to wake Ryder. I totally know I am being played, but the truth of the matter is, I just want to sleep! So, I do what I have to do. And many, MANY nights, he will also get up in between the midnight and mid-morning wake ups. For the last few weeks, he has been waking up about every two hours. That is a worse rate than he was at when he was a newborn!
I have recently decided that I would love to return to a full night's sleep (ha, if it where such a simple decision). To do this, I know I must be more firm with him and just toughen up and let him cry. I have been doing that some this last week. I am still rocking him, but if he pops up when I put him down, I am trying to just walk away and let him cry himself to sleep instead of pulling him out of the crib every time he whimpers. I admit, this is hard. Last night, for example, I put him down at 11:45 after he woke up crying. I thought he was sound asleep, his little arms limp and his head flopping over on me. As soon as he hit the bed, he pushed up and started pitifully crying. Instead I told myself to be strong. I did not get him up and instead listened to him cry for what seemed like forever, telling myself that he was fine, just spoiled. He eventually went to sleep and even had a pretty good night, sleeping until about 5:20 (sad, right) this morning. When he started making noise, I went to get him (actually feeling rested with the extra hour of uninterrupted sleep) and discovered he had apparently been asleep in a huge diaper full of poop (sorry, there is no nice way to say it) for probably most of the night. I felt so horrible, like I had ignored his cry for help. Heavy sigh. Now, I will probably be unable to get the idea of him wearing a dirty diaper out of my mind when he cries at night. I guess I will just keep on keeping on with our battle. Waking, rocking, crying, maybe even pooping. I would love to think that eventually, he will just start sleeping and stop waking so often. Maybe he will, but right now, it feels like I still have a small infant. What I really want is sleep--peaceful, restful, uninterrupted sleep.
Occasionally I am asked if and when I plan on having another baby. I think most people ask just to see if I am nuts enough to say I am, or they secretly wonder why in the world I would want to. The answer is yes, I do want a third baby (though I have thought about telling people "it was an accident" when it happens). I love the hustle and bustle of parenthood and as everyone knows, would love to try just one more time for a girl. And the way I look at it, I might as well go ahead and have my third baby while I am still getting up so much in the middle of the night. I would probably hardly even notice the disruption.
