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Attachment Parenting
Joka1234
member
Where do you find the time....
Joka1234
member
for intimacy?
My daughter is almost a year old; I cosleep with her and she nurses pretty much every 1-2 hrs through the night. She sleeps late (10ish, we've lost the battle to move it any sooner so many times), so by the time she finally falls asleep we are both exhausted and pass out as well.
I guess I'm just curious how other cosleeping, nursing mothers of children with crappy sleep find any amount of time away from the baby for intimacy with their spouse. We would like to have another child at some point in the next 1-2 years, and I honestly am having trouble figuring out the sheer logistics of how to make that happen...
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Re: Where do you find the time....
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We're struggling with that right now. DH isn't even in the bed with us since it's too small and he has sleep apnea. We've thought about naps but the mood is hard to muster up when it's like, "he just went down for a nap...and...GO!"
I don't even know if I remember how....
DD often goes to bed very late, but it works out well for FIL who watches her. She will wake around 10am and he is at the house.
So if we are both awake when she goes to sleep and not completely exhausted we will try.
We just did a major sleep overhaul here, and it has resulted in more "private time"
LO was nursing all night long too - we tried a number of things, and finally DH is sleeping with her. She doesn't wake up as much, and he can't give her what she wants so she goes back to sleep. I'm hoping to get back in bed with him/them soon. It's taken a month or so, but she has gone from waking every 2 hours to - last night - waking once. I can give you the long story if you are interested.
I want the long story!
We managed to find a lot of time while TTC: Naps, after bedtime, lunch breaks
(we both work FT). We also don't mind going other places than our bed (guest bedroom, couch, LR floor, whatever).
Of course now, all I want to do is go to bed at 8pm so our intimacy has dropped again. But, I guess that's to be expected during 1st tri.
lol - ok.
So I had been wanting to night wean since before the holidays, but LO was sick, then teething, then we were traveling, so the timing wasn't good. By the time we got back home and LO was not teething or sick, she was waking up to nurse or comfort nurse every 1-2 hours. It was exhausting. DH was sleeping on the futon because it was waking him up so much, and I was not getting much sleep at all.
We tried Dr. Gordon's method and LO would just get pissed and freak out and it was worse than just nursing her. We did that for three days with no improvement, so I took a break and just went back to nursing all night long while I read the Ferber book. I have mixed feelings about Ferber - I think it's a tremendously helpful resource, but I don't believe that all sleep associations are bad, and I don't agree that all babies can sleep through the night at 6 months. I believe, based on my limited observation of my own child, that she was not ready until at least a year. She had reverse cycled as well as has a really hard time self soothing and calming herself down before she was a year. Also, up until a year she would sleep in 4 hour chunks, so it wasn't like she was waking every hour. That was a more recent development brought on by teething, sickness and traveling. But I think each baby learns to self soothe similar to learning to walk - some do it early, some do it later. You would never force a baby to learn to walk before they are ready...
Anyway, I did learn a lot from Ferber. I believe my LO was getting nutrition at night but also falling asleep at the breast or with me holding her, and when she woke up she was unable to fall back asleep unless I was holding her or nursing her. AKA her sleep association. I spent a few nights making sure she fell asleep after she got done nursing, but I would still nurse her a few times at night. I was also trying to give her a snack before bedtime. I then transitioned to not nursing her at all during the night, but she was still waking up and wanting me to hold her. It was not working, even though she was not nursing between 10 and 5 she was still waking every 2 hours. This went on for about 2 weeks. So I enlisted DH to help. Now I will nurse her in a rocking chair, then DH takes her, does jammies, reads her a story and puts her in a crib to fall asleep. For the first week she would still wake up and call my name, but fall asleep after she figured out I wasn't there and it was DH.
We also figured out that she was waking up when she peed because of her cloth diaper. She would pee, and then trash around grab her crotch and kick her feet. It kept waking her up. So we switched to disposables on Friday and she hasn't done it since.
Just this weekend she started sleeping in much larger chunks, and last night she slept from 8ish until about 3am, then went right back asleep until 6 when I came in and nursed her.
There was crying involved, but we never actually left her to cry by herself. She does tell DH to "go!" and wants him to leave the room sometimes at bedtime, so he does and just stands by the door. She either goes to sleep or calls him back to do a story. I would love to put her in a toddler bed, but we live in an open space and there is no door to her room, so that will have to wait. We used to bedshare with the crib sidecarred, but now it is shoved against the bed with the side on it.
So that is the big long convoluted story. Whew!
As soon as he goes to bed. It's like a mad dash LOL