On sleep

We have truly been in just about every situation imaginable when it comes to sleep with our 3 little ones. This post is about our journey and what has worked for us with each child (to the best of my ever-fleeting memory) and hopefully a little help for you in your current struggles to get yourself and/or your littles to sleep peacefully.

going, going, gone! 

Our oldest, Malakai, was born during a heatwave in the summer of 2009. At the time we didn't have air conditioning except a small portable unit in the main living space. We had not planned to co-sleep because we honestly had no idea what that was or what it meant. Malakai had his own set of plans. We had an antique bassinet by my side of the bed for him to be in our room, but he slept best in my arms, and so that's what we did. He napped fairly well, it was mostly night time that was the struggle. Him being our only child and my staying home full time meant that we could be flexible with sleep for the most part. We thought it was bad, but my current experiences scoff at how easy those days were.

I thought Malakai would be swaddled until he left for college ;)

By 15 months old though, Kai was still not sleeping through the night. He didn't take a pacifier and was weaned but still needed soothed to sleep. This meant myself or mostly Ben walking him around until he fell into a deep enough sleep that he didn't notice when we'd set him down. Letting him cry to sleep was not an option for our situation. He would get hysterical (to the point of vomiting, rather quickly) and we just couldn't stand it.

We read Elizabeth Pantley's "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" and implemented the routines that worked best for us and he was soon sleeping through the night. It only took a couple weeks and it was so wonderful. I still recommend this book as it's suggestions and habits have come in handy with all of our children. Sure, there was sleep regression when we hit a tough bout of teething or a cold, but ultimately we could always retrain using the tactics we learned and going back to our routines.

In the fall of 2011, Desmond joined us. We received a co-sleeper that attached to our bed and were wondering where this magic had been the last couple years! Then we had our first experience with "colick", I was reduced to tears on several occassions and frequently felt like a failure. After a few weeks of it went by, it settled as it often does (cling to that if you find yourself in the throes of colick, it ALWAYS gets better!). From then Des was pretty content to sleep just about anywhere. He napped fairly frequently in a bouncy type seat with his special "lovey" in the middle of the living room while I made lunch and Malakai (then just over 2) played rather noisely as usual.

Malakai, Desmond + Aurelia...swings + bouncy seats to the rescue!

Desmond regressed into needing constant soothing to sleep and at about 15 months had learned to swing one leg over and hoist himself out of bed. We were NOT ready to transition to a toddler bed (and of course, neither was he) so we found our solution in the form of a few sleep sacks. First it worked but the bottom was so wide that he could still climb out, just with more effort. So, I sewed up the sides to make them narrower and ta-dah! no more crib-climing baby. When he learned to work the zipper (because he was baby houdini) we turned them backwards, but eventually he was in a toddler bed and ready to roll. In order to get him to sleep and not play we got into a bad habit of soothing him to sleep and laying him down every night, every nap. This continued even when we put the boys in the same room and turned the other into a "play room" to keep the toys from being a distraction. Someone always had to lay with him to get him to bed, which meant Malakai wanted that too.

Malakai stopped napping, so he would play in the other room while I lay down with Desmond for a nap, which often took a LONG time. At night Ben and I would both find ourselves laying in their little beds, waiting for them to fall asleep. We remembered our previous routines and began to implement them again. It took a while but things got better. One of the best tactics was agreeing to snuggle with each of them, but just for a few minutes. We had worked it all the way down to 1 minute and eventually stopped laying with them after stories and devotions altogether. They've had moments of bothering each other over the years, but for the most part they have always done really well sharing a room.

More recently, Malakai has had a run in with some anxiety and nightmares so I have started to lay down with each of them for "one minute" after lights out. I don't mind this at all, in fact, I look forward to it. I get a small amount of snuggle time with each of them. I pray over them, run my fingers through their hair and kiss their heads before tip-toeing out and whispering "see you when the sun comes up" which was something that we started to tell Malakai years ago and it just stuck. I will continue to do this for as long as they want me to.

Another way we have battled night time worries, bad dreams, and other sleep disturbances is implementing the use of essential oils. We have been using oils regularly for nearly 3 years and the more I use them, the more I am pleased with the outcome. I'd love to share details about this portion of our journey with you. Please feel free to email me to find out which oils we use and how to get some to try!

The boys were 5 and 3 when Aurelia was born. Raeli has been all over the map in terms of sleep. As a newborn she slept wonderfully, and it lasted until we had to stop swaddling her around 6 months because she would roll over in her sleep. We tried all methods of soothing her to sleep, including the multiple different ideas in our go-to resource, "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" but the only thing that worked was to ease her into bed time as much as we could, get her drowsy and lay her down, letting her cry a bit and put herself to sleep. Even still, this really only consistently worked for naps.

Once she got close to a year old she was struggling to get to sleep and stay asleep every single night. I went away for a weekend and we used the opportunity to start to wean her from nursing. I figured we would keep the bed time feeding and wean that one slowly as that's what worked best for her brothers. It did NOT work for her. She would nurse to sleep and then wake screaming as soon as I tried to put her down, no matter how long I held her or if I tried to get her to stay awake. Nothing that included nursing her before bed was working. Then she weaned herself completely. We put her to bed drowsy, but awake and she cried but not for long. Then she slept ALL NIGHT.

It was very foreign to us to let a baby cry to sleep as that would not have come close to working for our sons (or us) just years prior. It's what she wanted and it worked for her. I still have to retreat to the shower if she has a hard time getting to sleep. We also still go in to soothe her if she's having a rough go or cries for "too long"(for us that is over 15 minutes without calming down). At 18 months she still has bouts of waking and being difficult to get to sleep again. Just recently she struggled to sleep at night due to illness and teething, but we went back to our routines once we knew she was healthy and able and she cried a bit, but for less time and she went back to sleeping all night. The more nights go by, the less she protests. Now, she often just whimpers or makes no noise at all and lays there quietly before drifting off to sleep. I consider it a miracle each and every time.

When we've been out late or have had guests over, causing the kiddos to be a bit rowdy instead of sleepy, we usually turn to our favorite essential oils to encourage them to get to sleep calmly and quickly. We've had so much success with using them in this and many other ways that I can't help but sing their praises! They've also done wonders for Ben + I. With how often we were waking to soothe little ones, Ben + I had been used to waking frequently and struggled to sleep all night once they were all staying asleep. We turned to oils and they immediately worked to help us get to sleep quickly and stay asleep all night. All these benefits without the side effects of feeling too drowsy to get up in the morning or if the kids needed us in the night.

All that to say two things 1. never say never! 2. each kiddo is so totally different, let them "tell" you what works for them. As long as it also works for you and is safe, do it! I would never have thought that we would let a kiddo cry to sleep, it's just not something that was comfortable for Ben or I, but it's what works for our little girl and she sleeps well and wakes happy, so we do too!

edit: I wrote the bulk of this a week or so ago and of course Aurelia is in another sleep regression due to her 2 year molars taking FOR-EV-ER to come in all the way. We even went to her doctor to make sure she doesn't have an ear infection. Thankfully she is healthy, just having some referred pain from her teeth coming in. Since she is uncomfortable we do our best to soothe her to sleep in her own room if she wakes unahppy, but when she's just too miserable we pull into our bed to get some sleep. Seasons come and seasons go and if I've learned anything new over the last 6+ years of parenting it's to remain flexible and don't get too used to something because it's bound to change in the blink of an eye!

the latest

We just finished the process of refinancing our home. We'll save a nice amount of money every month, but it was a NIGHTMARE of a process. I'm so glad we won't be doing that again anytime soon! Thankfully my wonderful husband took care of every little detail and all I had to do was gather a few documents here and there. Thank God everything turned out well after missing the window once and having to apply for an extension (at the fault of our broker). So beyond glad to be done with that!

As the weather warms up and spring fades into summer we are in full swing planning to re-landscape the backyard with my father-in-law. It was actually our Christmas gift from Ben's parents to re do the yard and we are so excited to have nice grass! When we bought the place the yard was pretty nice, but unfortunately as it sat on the market, empty, nobody took care of the grass. So the leaves from the two towering maples fell and created a ton of muddy holes that were then filled by weeks and subsequently moss.

Unfortunately our raised beds that were here from the beginning weren't very well built. There was no foundation to secure them to the ground and they were all warped. We decided it would be best to take them apart and rebuild after the ground gets torn up with the rest of the yard. I won't be planting anything until we can rebuild, which is a bummer because who knows if I'll even make it in time to have anything edible, we shall see!

Desmond and Malakai are growing bigger and smarter every day. Des is really talkative and very close to crawling forward (instead of scooting backward). He can move himself from sitting to crawling and back. He's all over the place these days! Malakai loves to "see Desmond" and is doing much better at interacting with him gently...most of the time.

Ben + I finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy last week and are possibly going to see the movie with his parents this Friday. We have really enjoyed reading them simultaneously and talking about all the drama. We've been able to go out quite often with thanks to numerous family member willing to babysit.

Work has been busy as ever and I'm doing my best to keep up, which is one of the main reasons I haven't been updating here lately. I save blogging for times when the kids are napping simultaneously, IF I'm caught up on work that I can do from home. Since the boys haven't been cooperating by napping at the same time I've been behind on work and thus not blogging. I'm finally caught up for the moment since they finally slept for a few consecutive hours during the day!

Speaking of sleep, Des has been transitioning to only sleeping in his crib and it's been so great! He only comes into bed with us when he wakes to nurse after 5am and we both go back to sleep for a couple of hours (if Kai lets us). There have been a couple of rough nights between both kiddos the last couple weeks, but not unbearable! This morning though for some reason they both woke up at 5:45am ...OUCH!

There's surely a lot more going on that I'm missing, but that's just a quick recap of what is at the forefront of my mind at the moment...

Desmond: 6 months.

Yep, it's been another month and suddenly Desmond is 1/2 a year old (as of April 10th) and yes...I'm thinking about his 1st birthday celebration already. It'll be here so fast I have to at least have it on my mind and on my pin boards now!

At 6 months Desmond is super active. He is sleeping much less during the day which is a lot of fun for both myself and Malakai. He absolutely loves his big brother. My favorite part of the day is after Kai has been up a while and Des wakes, I'll bring him in and it's like they are reuniting after being apart for days. Kai says "Desmond! He's awake, I wanna see 'im!" Then comes right up to his face and says hi. Des lights up, giggles and wiggles his whole body with excitement. Every.single.morning.

{these look posed, but Kai totally just came up and did this on his own}

Des has been a drooling machine for the past couple of months, teething like crazy but nothing has popped through yet. He loves to blow raspberries and is babbling more and more every day. Lately he has been kind of growling/shouting and it sounds like he's angry but he'll be grinning and laughing all the while. We call it "testing his voice". Kai used to do something similar but he did high pitched squeals.

We just had Desmond's 6 month well-check this morning. According to Dr. B he's perfect...confirming what we already thought. He's 27 inches long (tall) which puts him in the 75th %, 22lbs 1oz. which is off the charts as he has been since about 2 days old. His head is 18 1/4 inches, big ol' noggin just like his brother.

At just 6 months he's growing out of 9 month clothes and fitting Kai's hand-me-down 12 month clothing which just boggles my mind. For those of you who don't know, Ben's younger brother is actually quite a bit bigger than him (Ben is 6 ft. tall and David is 6' 5") so we often wonder if Des and Kai will be the same in that regard.

At the end of March he started pushing up on to his hands and knees and sometimes onto his toes, lifting his whole body off the ground! He is one strong little man! Then he started trying to crawl towards toys but ends up scooting backward which really frustrates him. Late last week he actually crawled a tiny bit forward on his knees for Grandma Debbie + I! It was so exciting, but whoah it seems too early to already have a mobile baby.

He is also sitting upright really well, but I always put a boppy or other pillows around him because he'll randomly get excited and fling himself backward. He almost instantly figured out how to move from sitting to a crawling position on his tummy without any issues.

Unfortunately he has started crying more. He never really cried when he was upset, just got a bit fussy. He's been a good sleeper since he got over his first bout of colick around 1 month old. BUT once he started learning so many new things he started to wake more and get more crabby. The other night he woke up at 4am and wouldn't go back to sleep, which was a first. Big bro has always been our difficult one when it comes to sleeping, I'm hoping Desmond doesn't follow in those footsteps! Last night he did sleep unswaddled all night, but he was nursing pretty frequently and ended up staying in bed with us from 4am-7am. After chatting with Dr. B we'll be trying some no-cry solutions to get him sleeping longer and more independently.

We started him on "solids" over Easter weekend, just doing some baby oatmeal cereal and breastmilk once a day. We'll ease him into my homemade veggie and fruit purees soon and more frequent solid feedings by 9 months per his Dr's recommendation.

About once every week or two he had a couple of days of almost constant spitting up, but it never bothers him. When I mentioned this to Dr. B she laughed and said that "happy spitter" is a actual medical term, we all laughed. It was good to know that it's common enough to have a term and that it's not something to worry about.

Des is still quick to smile and easy to get laughing. He is so friendly and snuggly. He was smiling and babbling to the Dr and nurses during the whole visit. After his vaccines he quit crying as soon as I picked him up and nursed to sleep. He only recently is able to stay asleep during transitions from car seat or mama's arms to his crib, which has been really nice.

Overall he is a happy healthy big baby boy and we are enjoying the journey of watching him grow, both in body and in skills and personality.

getting there

Malakai hasn't been much of an independent sleeper. From day one he would sleep best snuggled up with Ben + I. At the time we weren't planning on co-sleeping and knew very little about it, but we learned and we loved it.

Around 5 months of age he started sleeping in his crib more regularly. By 8 months he refused to sleep in our bed at all (which made me a little sad). Yet he rarely slept through the night. He needed soothing to sleep at the beginning of bed time and 2-3 times in the middle of the night. It hasn't been a burden to us, we've gotten used to this routine.

A few months ago we knew that we needed some help assisting Malakai in his transition to independent sleep. Cry it out was never an option. It just doesn't work for any one of us in this household. I had heard great things about the book The No Cry Sleep Solution and ordered a copy from Amazon.

When it arrived, Ben and I read through it and then discussed the sleep solutions and habits we needed to create. We took notes and followed the plans, but quite fluidly. We never forced anything, but what worked best for us was to get a more solid routine going and to stick to that as closely as possible for as long as possible.

When Ben gets home in the early evening he has playtime with Malakai. They go get the mail together and run around the house until dinner time. After dinner we all hang out together and try to quiet things down a bit. Then it's bath, jammies, story time with daddy and bedtime. At bedtime Malakai transitioned from needing to be rocked until he was passed out asleep, to just recently refusing to be held and falling asleep on his own after a few minutes of snuggling his blankie {his lovey of choice}.

It sounds simple but we have waited a very long time for this. He'd fake us out here and there over the months by falling asleep on his own and/or sleeping through the night soundly, but it was never a consecutive event. All this time he has been getting enough sleep, and so have we, but he just needed help getting calm and comfortable to drift off. Often he would be fighting a cold or teething pain. The child has 12 teeth at 15 months old. All four of his molars hit him at once and one of them is all the way through.

There's no remedy or solution that fits every family. We have always done what works for us and will continue to do so. Now that I'm writing about this, Malakai could revert back to waking 2-3 times a night and needing to be rocked to sleep and that's okay. We'll do what he needs, when he needs it...I think that's called parenting.

Needless to say, I really recommend The No Cry Sleep Solution if you're looking for some good information on the science of sleep, ideas about gently setting routines, and great worksheets to help you get there.

The past week we've had time to unwind or get things done while Malakai sleeps and then get our own 8 hours of uninterrupted rest on top of that. We hardly know how to handle this new normal.

Now if only I could figure out how to get him to nap away from home...

crib wars

After all the searching and researching, the money my parents spent and all the time it took to put it together  -Malakai would not sleep in his crib. Not at night, not for naps.

Since he was born he's preferred to sleep in mama & daddy's bed. I'm not complaining about this part, I've loved having him sleep with us. However, lately he's not been sleeping so soundly with us and he always gets so sweaty. Ben and I have both read up on co-sleeping/bed-sharing/whateveryouwanttocallit. It's possible that sometimes it can cause restlessness in children. Where he used to sleep best with us, we've now been having him sleep in his swing next to our bed (where he usually naps).

When I took this photo, about three weeks before Kai's birthday, I never thought that he'd sleep in the swing to the right more than the crib!


We've got some use out of the crib. When little Henry comes over he'll occasionally nap there. But he too has been on a crib strike (at my house anyway) and I've had to put him down in the swing or his carseat! You'd think there was something wrong with this crib, the one we thought was so perfect for our little nursery when we were putting it all together.

This past weekend, we decided to tough it out and just keep putting him back in the crib. No matter how many times he woke up we were determined to get him to sleep in the crib for longer than his 30 minute cat naps.

Saturday night was our first go and I honestly can't keep track of how many times we were both up soothing him back to sleep, but I think his longest stretch of sleep was 2 hours. We were pretty excited about that measly little 120 minutes.

He also napped for at least two hours on Sunday in his crib... this is just UNHEARD OF!

Daddy always puts Malakai down to sleep. On "work nights" if he wakes between whenever we went to bed and before midnight daddy is pretty much still on duty. If it's later than that, I get up and let Ben sleep. Other times when we've tried to get him down in his crib, he keeps waking up and Ben usually just brings him to bed so we can all get some sleep. Honestly, I'd stay up all night with him if it would help...but Malakai wasn't getting any sleep either and that was my main concern.

Last night was our second try and he was hard to get down at first, but he usually is. He'll fake-out and sleep for 30-60 minutes sometimes and then wake up every time you set him down. He did a bit of this and Ben kept soothing him back to sleep from about 9pm to 10pm.

Kai woke up again at 11:15pm and I got up (Ben doesn't get up once he's fallen asleep unless I shake him) and soothed him to sleep. We didn't hear from him again til 2am! THREE HOURS! I got up and fed him, he fell asleep eating and was back down by 2:25am til just before 6am this morning! MIRACULOUS! It's like something just clicked and he decided the crib is an okay place to be.

At 6am Ben was getting up for work. He went to check on Kai and he was laying awake just looking around quietly and grinned big at daddy when he spotted him. Ben brought Kai to me in bed, I fed him and we both fell back asleep. I was kind of glad to do it this way so I still got my cuddle time with my sweet boy this morning.

I'd bedshare forever if I could, but once Malakai's sleep was getting interrupted, that's when we decided it was really time to get him in his crib. Plus, Ben's sleep patterns are a bit erratic. He walks and talks in his sleep on occasion so I have to sleep very lightly to make sure he doesn't move and harm our little guy.

So- here's hoping that he continues to sleep soundly and happily in his crib and that mama can get some sleep without her little cuddle bug.