Yeah, motherhood is great. I love my baby. But I had NO idea that you have to teach a baby how to sleep. I mean, seriously? Sleep? We all love it, so why is it so hard?

Well, first off, the idea of teaching a baby to sleep is a Western thing. All over the world parents sleep with their babies and yeah, some of those babies are hard ones likes ours. But the parents deal with it. There are often extended families to help. That’s just how it is. The concept of cribs, nurseries, "self-soothing"… all Western.

So, why did we have a problem? Well, we don’t live with a houseful of support and a mother simply cannot function off of 1 hour cycles of sleep. At least this mother couldn’t.

At 2 months, still in colic mode, Aiden decided to make things worse by taking his lovely 2-hour naps and cutting them into 30-45 minute chunks. Suddenly, mommy’s nap time was gone. Poof. I stopped functioning.

Ok, I was probably a little resentful already of how hard it was for us to get Aiden to fall asleep. Colic is really difficult to deal with – hours of crying or at least high-level fussing every night. After a while, you do whatever works. That was the boob. Now, this was a problematic thing, given my at-the-time low-milk-supply. Aiden would get frustrated, I’d get frustrated. It was a mess. But it was the only thing that worked, so you put up with the screaming and just keep at it. Eventually sleep would arrive. Ahhh.

We gave up on the bassinet after about 5 weeks – that resulted in even less sleep as we tried to gently place the sleeping baby in the bassinet… it never worked. At first, I tried to sleep sitting up. Ha! Not so restful.

So, there I was, lying in contorted positions all night, my shirt pulled up and boobs spilled out feeding Aiden every 45 – 90 minutes. All night. And nearly continuously as morning approached. And it got worse as the weeks went by and our overtired baby couldn’t fall asleep at all for his afternoon naps. Despite LOTS of trying. Eventually he wouldn’t fall asleep unless I took him out. Every day. Still, that afternoon nap was hit or miss. Then the morning nap got sketchy too. I could only walk so much with the carrier for missed naps (carrier and sometimes stroller would usually get Aiden to nap). I was too tired for it.

I hit a few walls, had a few meltdowns, read many sleep books, dozens and dozens of websites and forums, and decided I was still confused about the whole sleep thing. How the heck do you teach a baby to sleep?

In BC, the nurses are taught to tell us to slowly teach a baby to go to sleep on his own by putting him down drowsy then down awake. They don’t mention how to do this, of course, so we’re left to our own devices. Hence the obsessive reading.

Well, I had too many questions, so we bit the bullet and paid for a sleep consultant (seriously, a very reasonable fee). There are a few out there in Vancouver.

If you’re going to go through "sleep training", you can pretty much expect all methods to have some crying. The training methods simply differ to the extent of the type of involvement the parent has after the crying has begun – do you pick up the child? do you pat? do you stay in the room, leave, do both?

So, I won’t give you the ins and outs of our method. You can ask me in an email, if you want to know. I was nervous. Excited. I felt like both a good and a bad mother. OMG, I’m going to let my baby cry! But I’m giving him the gift of sleep, right?! So, it was a mixed set of emotions. Ianiv was my rock through all of this, supporting me and our choices.

Finally, finally!, sleep would not be my sole responsibility. Yahoo! Dad got to be the one to put Aiden to bed and check on him. I just had to feed Aiden when it was time (you mean my breasts would be only for feeding? Crazy!). We started with bedtimes only. I cried like crazy. But 12 minutes in, and it was over. He was asleep? WTF! It took ME longer to do that with breastfeeding. I felt elated and annoyed. Mostly elated. Of course, he woke up a lot that first night. And for a few nights. But each time, he went back to sleep faster and woke up fewer times. He slept a 7 hour stretch after just a couple of days! If only I’d known he was capable!

About a week ago, we started nap training. That process is still ongoing and will take much longer. Aiden is sleeping in his own crib, 4-5 naps per day at 30-45 minutes each (shorter for his last nap). He falls asleep quickly if caught at the right time. He even slept once without crying. The hardest part of nap training is trying to teach him to return to sleep after that short nap. He should be sleeping 1.5-2 hours for 2 naps. We spend an hour each morning working on that. Haven’t had any success so far. I know he’s capable (I’d had some success with breastfeeding him back to sleep), but he doesn’t get it yet. We’re told it could take several weeks. So, we work on it. But we’re positive we’re doing the best thing for Aiden.

There were nights where things got worse, and still he cries. We are on the path, though, and it’s a good one. We chose the right time for us to start this. Ianiv & I felt like we were ready and, perhaps more importantly, we felt like Aiden was ready. Like he knew we loved him and that he had no issues that would confuse us in the process (like gas pain crying). It was the best choice we’ve ever made, as parents.

So, here we are. We spent 3x as much on our stroller as we did on our sleep consultant. And if I had to choose, I’d rather carry Aiden around 24 hours a day and have SLEEP than a stroller. It’s priceless. Seriously. You never know it until you’ve been sleep deprived for months. And until you’ve dealt with a baby who has also been sleep deprived for months!!

Though at night we may be tired because of his colic, we are treasuring every moment with our little prince. Every day I get out for a long walk with him and get to watch him as he discovers the world a little more each day. It’s amazing to see everything from the perspective of a parent.

I hope 2009 has brought some measure of joy to each and every one of you!

Here also is our birth announcement card, which was also just completed in time for Christmas. Both cards were created with Little Star Greetings.

See all Aiden photos here

On October 23, just as I was going to bed, my water broke. I wasn’t sure at first, so I kept waiting for labor to start. No luck. By 6am, when I was sure my water had broken but labor hadn’t started, we went to the hospital. They assessed that the baby was ok and asked me to return when they had more nurses. Because my membranes had ruptured prematurely, I had to be induced into labor.

At 1pm, I was put on the oxytocin drip. By 8pm, labor was still pretty manageable… because my body hadn’t started laboring on its own yet. Within 2 hours, all that changed. After being on the maximum drip for 30 minutes, my labor kicked into overdrive. My contractions became painful and back-to-back, almost no down time in between. The drip was stopped but my body kept up the same pace. Being only 3cm dilated at the point, and having such intense contractions, I opted for the epidural. This was not something I wanted to do, but I’m glad I did. Thankfully there were no complications as a result. Just 3 hours later I was ready to push and an hour later our baby was born! Within a half hour he had latched on and was a loud and happy baby.

Through the night, while recovering from the labor and epidural, we learned to take care of our baby. And tried to come up with a name. We had a short list, at the top of which was Aiden. It was the one name that Ianiv & I both independently put on our individual lists and it still felt right. One of the other names on the list was Riley and, when reviewing the list, it stood out to Ianiv. When I heard it at this point I instantly thought it should be a middle name, and so we quickly landed on Aiden Riley for our new little boy.

We stayed in the hospital until Sunday afternoon then returned home. Ianiv’s mother and sister both stayed with us at this time to help take care of Aiden – and us – as we adapted to our new family. It was great to have the support. Aiden has been a wonderful baby so far – very alert, very strong. He could roll onto his side from day 1 and can hold his head up for quite some time! Amazing to watch him grow and learn.

Though we got off to a good start with breastfeeding, that has remained our largest challenge to date. Aiden is a very good breastfeeder but my milk supply has been slow to come in. His weight dropped quickly after we returned home and he’s yet to return to his birth weight, which is past when he should have done so. Partially this was due to his placid nature, but partially it’s just difficult to monitor his weight at home. We have had some nurse visits, but they are swamped with H1N1 stuff, and community drop-ins are not every day. It was therefore a few days before we realized he still needed formula. Now he’s back on track and should resume his growth pattern within a couple of days. But oy, so stressful! Meanwhile, we’re doing everything we can to get up my own milk supply – lots of fluids, good food, pumping, Domperidone, fenugreek and nursing tea. We’re trying it all. Right now I’m producing about half of what he needs. Hopefully that improves soon.

Aside from these hurdles, we’re adapting well to life as a family. Aiden has already been out for coffee twice! Any surprises there? ;)