Weaning in Wien

I played it cool for the last 14 months. Now it is time to come clean. There was a part of me that had given up. Sleep would forever be limited to a series of 2-4 hour chunks. I listened, trying to suppress my envy, when other mothers enumerated the hours their babies slept in one sitting with double digits. It was galactically different from our experience... As I've said before, night for us was not for sleeping. No, night was all about eating.

I was living, 24 hour, breastraunt.

Today, I am in nursing mother's Valhalla. I've waited a long time to say it but, Jude finally sleeps through the night. 11 beautiful hours. Time to sleep or watch a movie uninterrupted by a little boy who has decided that he wants a snack, or three. Gone are the days where I would literally rush through my evening projects, an intended source of relaxation in the day, unsure whether I had 4 hours to work or 2. It was a long 14 months. Before I get into the details of how we did it and, gasp, what life was like before we made this sweeping transition, I have to add that we all continue to sleep together in the same bed. This was biggest doubt/question/ fear when it came to night weaning. How in the world would this translate for Jude when he sleeps so close to the source? But after only 6 nights in a 10 part plan, we were surprised at how effortlessly we made the move from the all night diner to a more modest 12 hour establishment.

Here it is in 3 acts.

Act 1: Zombie Stories

I have been working on this post for a while, like a month or so. I'll just chalk up its lack of completion to me being so darn well rested. Anyhow, I guess it is appropriate that I find the time to recall these chapters in my life so close to Halloween because I was a living Zombie for almost a year. Recently a friend was remarking about how crazy it is that people are so concerned about a mother having a cocktail and holding her baby. She had recently given birth and noted that she was by far a bigger danger to her son sleep deprived than she would ever be after a glass of wine or two. It's the absolute truth. As any mother can probably relate, I was a fraction of human being for most of the early months. It's a good thing Jude took so long to nurse during the day, because that is where he was safest, with me in a chair, sitting down.

But for most folks, life incrementally improves. At around 6 months, maybe they are getting up a couple of times at night to nurse/ feed the baby. Ohh no00. Not us. Prior to moving to Vienna, Jude was rivaling his cousin, more than half his age, for the number of times waking at night. It just didn't make sense.

I was beginning to tire.

With Gabe already abroad, I knew that it wasn't going to be practical for me to attempt to modify the situation with night nursing alone. I figured it was going to be difficult, tantamount to taking away Jude's most coveted possession. However, with the recent success of a friend in a similar co-sleeping, frequent night waking predicament, I began to formulate a plan. Travel Wien. Settle. Wean.

Act 2: The Good Doctor

I was pretty surprised how quickly Jude adapted to the time change once we arrived in Vienna. Two days in, I was lump well into the afternoon, but the baby was rearing to go explore the diverse and expansive parks in his new city and busying himself by emptying the contents of his new kitchen cabinets. This was my first cue that maybe I had underestimated his ability to adjust. It wouldn't be the first time where Jude was miles ahead of me, wanting to progress, while I held him back by my limiting understanding of where he was at developmentally. All I ever had to do was simply read his signals more clearly to put us in synch, and he would, often within days, make his leap to the next age appropriate level.

So I did what I always do before we prepare to make some big babymove... I googled. It wasn't just night weaning that I was curious about though. I needed to see if what I had begun to construct in my mind, a nighttime world where mom, dad, and baby all sleep soundly, side by side, for say, 7-9 hours, existed out there on the interweb....

and it did.

Welcome Dr Jay Gordon, Pediatrician, Co-sleeping advocate, and as we have so fondly dubbed him "Nighttime Weaning Man with the Plan." I'll bet Dr. Gordon gets a lot of hits from moms like me, ladies who have fought the good fight for a year, maybe more, and are looking for more than just a few chunks of sleep. Well, he had me at hello. I promptly bookmarked the page and began to make my case for "the plan" that evening. Gabe listened and agreed that Jude was most likely ready for such a plan and was willing to give it a shot. He recognized that this might truncate his sleep for the next week or so, but if we were able to pull it off, the net result would benefit the entire family i.e. happy mama, happy family.

I have to pause here and add some much-needed information about the plan, because it isn't really much more than helping a baby do something very natural- fall asleep on their own. Upon becoming parents, neither Gabe nor I were big fans of sleep training. We agreed that this was not something we were keen on doing when faced with the prospect of letting Jude cry as a means of getting him to sleep for longer stretches. We sucked it up and figured he would eventually sleep or go to college. However, Dr. G's approach was something we could handle. It consisted of 3-4 nights of nursing, but not allowing your child to fall asleep while nursing, 3-4 night of gentle patting, rocking etc. without nursing, and 3-4 nights without assistance falling back asleep. The entire premise of his plan was a.) to wait until the baby was old enough to sleep through the night (which for him was 7-8 hours) and b.) construct a warm environment to support this transition. He acknowledged that there might be tears, but they would most likely be tears of frustration at the change versus tears of fear/ abandonment.

And it worked.

Of the 6 nights we actively worked towards night weaning, there were about 10 minutes of oh-my-goodness, we are going to get kicked out of this apartment tears. After that there were a couple of stretches where Jude would wake up and play around in bed, trying to engage us, and eventually fall back asleep. By the end of the week, he was sleeping 10-11 hours stretches. Can I get an Amen?

Act 3: Life After

What can I say? It's pretty amazing. If I could get myself to bed before midnight, I would be a fully functioning adult. I now get some much-needed time to myself in the evening and that has made me a mildly saner human being. And contrary to the last couple of sentences, I am not the sole recipient of positive gains from this transition. Jude has benefited as well. He is a (slightly) mellower version of himself with less frequent ups and downs.

So why the heck didn't we do this sooner?

In truth, I don't think it would have worked. I must say, I think 90% of our success can be attributed to the fact that we waited. He was 14 months old. He could go 9 hours without food (even if that isn't his preference.) There is a part of me that believes he was even old enough to see some of the logic in what we were saying when we would whisper, Jude go night-night, repeatedly until he conked out.

Either way, it's a pretty great thing, win-win all around. First and foremost, I get some sleep, we've maintained our co-sleeping arrangement, Jude continues his prefered lifestyle of unchecked nursing during the day, and Gabe and I maintained the integrity of our parenting philosophy in the process. Good story all around. I definitely feel like I have arrived, until child #2 comes along of course.