Sleepless in Chicago

It has become such a pain in the rear to put Saya to sleep. She seems to have dropped her second nap at the tender age of only 11 months, making it much harder for me to get some ME time. Saya doesn't seem to sleep at all at my will. I'll do things like nurse her, rock her, feed her solids until she's very full, bring her out for a drive (which often successfully lulls her to sleep, but not without her dissent; she still hates her car seat to death). When Saya was first born, it was a breeze putting her down. She slept through anything, even through Ben's incessant cries (Ben cried more than she did as a newborn), or a loud vacuum going through the house, or people's screaming. Saya slept so much it made Phuong, my older sister, wonder whether she was "normal" or "well" at all. I really took that for granted. I never had to put her to sleep. She just fell asleep. If only it could stay that way. 

My little sleeping angel slowly turned into a sleeping rebel. In a desperate attempt to get Saya breastfeeding again after a series of nursing strikes, I decided to cut Saya from the bottle altogether and breastfeed exclusively. When she finally took the breast again, she nursed from me practically 15-20 hours a day, which to my surprise, is not rare at all. Staying that long on the breast, it'd make sense that she took some of her naps there too. (It's a very bad habit that seems to run along the bloodline of little babies born in Hak's family) It really didn't occur to me at the time that I was developing a bad precedent by nursing to sleep. But then again, I couldn't help it either because I could never really tell whether she was nursing to eat or nursing for comfort. I didn't want to starve the poor thing, so I nurse on demand. It was so easy to nurse her to sleep. Whenever I was around, she wanted me to nurse her to sleep. Other people could get away with other sleeping methods, but I had to nurse her if I (and I emphasize that I) wanted her to go to sleep. And when Saya's asleep, it's usually ideal that someone sleeps with her so that she takes long naps. She can sleep for a block of 12 hours every night when she sleeps with us. 

Saya started sleeping through the night (STTN) at 3 months. That lasted for a good 2.5 months. She started to wake up more for night feedings. Thankfully, it was easy to put her back to sleep. All I had to do was pop one of my breasts for her and she latch on quietly while she drinks herself back to sleep. However, I'm a very light sleeper and any interrupted sleep means nothing to me. I hated it, of course. The night feedings became more frequent. When I tried to wean Saya onto the bottle at five months, the night feedings became even more frequent. Ironically, I can't seemt o get Saya onto the stuff that I tried to get her off when she was a young baby. Saya til this day, refuses to take a bottle again. As a new mother, I never understood how POWERFUL breastfeeding can be. I mean, the babies just LOVE that stuff, like a druggie on crack. I didn't anticipate that she would refuse a bottle since she was taking that stuff so well in the first three months. Anyway, by 9 months I practically woke up 3-5 times during the night to feed Saya. It led to a lot of resentment between me and Hak. He just has it sooooooooooo easy that he can sleep through the night while I laboriously do everything for his daughter ( i even bathe her and feed her while he "works fulltime", some inequitable division of labor I'm telling you!). I began to wonder whether it's because I breastfeed Saya and whether I had made a terrible decision to breastfeed Saya.  

Funny because it's even harder now to put Saya to sleep. She has become so easily distracted that she'll cut off her nursing occasionally to play with her surroundings and then relatch to nurse again. She might repeat that cycle throughout the bedtime routine an hour (or 2, or 3, or 4) before she goes down to sleep at night. I've thought about letting her cry-it-out, but failed miserably after one or two attempts. I've tried to gently Ferberize her, but that never really works either. Once in a blue moon, she'll fall asleep on her own (after Hak and I are dead tired). Last night, I had to literally pin her down to nurse her to sleep. Otherwise, she'd just roam around the bed looking for walls to stand against.

I presume it's because she doesn't have enough time to practice her walking and standing during the day. Hak and I try to give her plenty of that. We've definitely become more nonchalant about her dreadful sleeping habits. If we didn't, I think we would have gone mad. I picked up crocheting and knitting (again) lately. I've been crazy about it. Everytime Saya sleeps is an opportunity for me to further develop my yarning skills. It explains why I'm up at 3 am in the morning blogging about my daughter's sleep habits. Actually, I should've have been looking up more free patterns (all I can afford these days) on Ravelry, or updating my projects application. I can't believe I've completed over 15 projects since I started 3? months ago. But that's another story in itself.