Sleepless in Singapore

Yaaaaaaaaaawn. Our alarm clock (aka John) rang at 5.40am this morning. And despite my best efforts to put him on snooze mode for another hour, he was awake for the day.

Ever since giving birth, I've never had to set an alarm clock and I dont think I'd need to for a long time to come. Yes, I'm saying that in faith and no, I'm not pregnant yet.

But the lack of sleep has probably got to be the hardest thing about being a mother. I don't think I've had a full 8 hours sleep since John was born. Actually even before that cos of the frequent waking to go to the loo when you're pregnant.

But I love my sleep and not being able to have it has been awfully awfully tough for me. Give me breastfeeding pains, John's clingy-ness and no social life anytime. I really want more sleep because I'm so dog tired.

Having said that, I was reminded yesterday that I need to have the right perspectives. I have a son who is healthy and loves me. When he wakes up he calls for mummy and yes that's better than any real alarm clock.

I'm still thanking God for this opportunity to even be a mother knowing some can't even conceive. Yes, given a chance to do this all over again, I'd do some things differently like sleep train much earlier on. But I've learnt and when the next one comes, I'll be better equipped to handle the sleep issues.

But... Still... It would be lovely to have one full night's sleep. Zzzzzzzzzzz


-- Post From My iPhone

He's 20 months already!!!

I haven't done a real update on John for a while now and since he turns a whopping 20 months today, I thought i'd do just that.

Physically, John's thriving. We hadn't weighed him for some time and while we didn't know his actual weight in figures, we certainly felt every increase in our arms. So a trip to the PD for an immunisation booster and we find out he's 12.2kg! That's a whole 9 kilos more than what he weighed when he was born. He eats well and loves his food. Breads and biscuits of ANY kind really do it for him and he can go on and on if mummy doesn't stop him. He's been going wild this CNY with all the goodies everywhere and it's not easy to get him to stop cos mummy herself is indulging. Boo me - i'll deal with the consequences in a couple of days. :S

I'm happy to say that as of tonight, John's been sleeping through the night and on his own for a whole 3 weeks now! PRAISE GOD! J and I made the decision to sleep train him and although it was perhaps the hardest decision we had to make, it may have been the best one ever. Our little family of 3 is now well rested and having a whole lot more fun. We still see one or two bumps in the road, but consistency in our sleep training approach has ensured that he gets a good 10 - 11hours sleep every night. God is indeed good. I attribute all success in this area to Him and His guidance.

John's got a very big personality coupled with a really infectious laugh. He's a real social creature, very much like his mummy and has no qualms approaching other kids and asking to play with their toys. He loves being around people, especially children, and will do anything to get some claps from us. And when he's really excited, he'll start running on the spot and clapping his hands.

He attends Julia Gabriel with me 3 times a week - 2 chinese lessons and 1 english - and although I've heard very differing opinions about the effectiveness of the school, I believe John's benefiting from the sessions. I can see John learning and socialising well with others. He can now follow instructions, mostly in english and some in mandarin, and he can follow most of the actions during the sing-a-longs. He sits through the story-telling with no fuss and loves to play with paint and glue.

John loves TV, but he loves books too. He watches any show that's on tele and even knows how to tell us he wants to change the channel. His favourite would be anything with music. He "reads" anything too, from simple board books to flipping encyclopedias.

The thing we love most about John is that he shows he loves us. He'd snuggle up against us in the morning and plant a kiss on each of our cheeks - several times too. He's such a joy to have around and he constantly amazes us with the things he does. We pray we'd grow to be better parents everyday and that God will continue to guide our steps as we bring up this gift he's given us.

Happy 20 months bubba! Mummy loves you!

the zzzzzs again...

So, at the beginning of this year, I had posted about how John's been sleeping through the night. I am so sad to say that all that sleep training has unfortunately undone itself and we're back to frequent night wakings and mummy being the only one able to put the bub back to sleep. It became especially bad when he was sick recently and we had to comfort him to sleep every half hour (an experience I NEVER want to relive again!).

This is highly highly disappointing for me cos it's been taking a toll on me and i'm once again really really tired. And it doesn't help that John's so much more active now. It seems my boy has grown up significantly over the last few days and he's showing his independent spirited side. It's espeically so during nap times. He's now standing in his cot and it takes a lot longer for him to go to sleep.

At night, I sometimes have to spend a long time nursing him and carrying him till he's in a deep slumber before putting him down. I guess the good thing is that John sleeps in his own room and has done so since we first sleep trained him.

John's sleep has been the biggest challenge for me. I've just not been able to have sustained success in this area and it's something I know I have to fix sooner rather than later; which of course means I'm putting all this stress on myself tring to find solutions. We're thinking of sleep training him again soon and we hope this time, it'll last longer than just a couple of months.

So if you're reading this, please pray for us. For God to lead us to the right solution, to grant us the wisdom to know how to implement it, for the strength to go through with it and for the patience to stick it through.

All about the Zs...

Sleep. I love sleep. Absolutely absolutely love sleep. Thing is, if I had known how little sleep I would have been getting after giving birth, I'd have slept for a whole week or month before popping.

John is a lovely baby. Everything about him is fabulous. Except sleep. Here's a little summary of his sleep patterns up till about 2 weeks ago.

For the first few months of his life, he had to be shushed and rocked to sleep. On top of that, he only slept on James or myself. At night, James would take the first shift and I'd take the second half of the night. And John would only sleep in our arms or on our chests. It was really difficult. We then put him in a co-sleeper by our bed and we yielded to pressures and gave him a pacifier, which he got so used to he couldn't sleep without one. But he still had to be aided to sleep.

We were still really tired and worn out so we decided to bring him into our bed. He slept in between us and everytime he woke at night, I'd feed him and he went back to sleep. This seemed to work for a while and he started to sleep for longer stretches of 4 - 5 hours. But after one week of success, things went wrong again. He was expecting to suckle each and everytime he woke, which amounted to about 5 - 6 times a night. No one would be happy waking that many times a night. Certainly John was suffering just as we were. We were hoping that he would sleep better after starting solids, but no, that didn't help. I even bought formula hoping that would help him at night. But the bub absolutely hated it. So we made a very hard decision to sleep train John.

All this while, I had been reading book after book about babies and sleep looking for a solution to help John. We decided to sleep train him using the method by Tizzie Hall in her book Save Our Sleep. It's a variant of the cry-it-out approach but John is assured we're there with him if he can't settle.

Before we started, I prayed that God would give John the wisdom to learn how to settle and re-settle when he woke in the middle of the night. I prayed too that God would protect him physically and mentally and that He would help speed this process along.

We started on 2 January and I can say that God is indeed good. John learnt to self-settle by the 2nd night and was sleeping for longer stretches at a time! On the night of 3 Jan, he slept from 7.25pm all the way till 5am with only a 3 minute peep at 10.30pm! The next weekend, we moved him into his own room and although we had to sort of 'start over' because he was now in a new environment, he only took a night to get into the hang of things again!

So, for the record, my baby is sleeping through the night from 7+pm to 6+am with only one feed at 11pm!!!!!!!!!!!!! And he no longer uses a pacifier! Hallelujah! God indeed is good and He certainly answers prayers. I am finally sleeping much better at night and so is James. Here's to making up for all the lost sleep over the last 7 months!