Intuition

When you read natural birth books, when you learn about a natural lifestyle, a lot of people talk about intuition, and how you should go with your gut.

Unless it is going the opposite way they would.

Having most of our lives on the internet can lead to a lot of issues.  People thinking you should have done things differently, being judged for things you choose for yourself and your family.  By going with your intuition, you will get steamrolled if others don't agree.

We tell women to follow their intuition with their pregnancy and birth all the time.  To find what information they need, to do what they need to do in their pregnancy to protect themselves and their babies.  And yet, when they do this an end up with an outcome that we think was wrong, like an induction or cesarean, we judge.

When a family chooses to bedshare or cosleep with their child because they feel it is the right thing to do, the natural community is so excited.  But when they move their child to another room, or let their child cry (when they are obviously just going to cry anyway and old enough to not be at the age where they don't understand), we judge.

Intuition goes both ways.  It can be anything from something like knowing you're pregnant before you are, to knowing that you are going to lose your baby before you actually do.  It can be planning a very hands off homebirth to being in labor and knowing that something is wrong and a transfer is necessary before any signs show.  It can be keeping your child close or letting them sleep alone when they are old enough.

Intuition is at the very core of being a mother.  You know your child better than anyone.  For most, you grew that baby, you birthed that baby, you nurtured that baby.  They are forever part of you.

We need to stop judging so heavily because we think they are doing something wrong.  Just because you think would do it differently (though in reality you have no idea why they are actually choosing what they are) doesn't mean it is okay to slam another family.

We need to learn that everything has two sides.  Intuition has two sides.  The side where things are good and the side where they are bad.  That's how life works.

We need to learn patience and acceptance of other families, of other mothers.  Mom wars get us all nowhere.  It turns people off to what we are trying to do.  You can't yell at someone that they are doing it wrong and at the same time hope they will listen and learn something.

It will forever be the one in the crowd speaking in soft tones full of patience and love that people will listen to.  The one yelling will have them turn away.

Be patient.  Be with others how you would want them to be with you and your children.  And in the end, go with your own gut regardless of what others say.

My Name Is Kayce, And I Have A Sleep Fighter

Through High School, I went every day on only a few hours of sleep.  I was a teenager, it was fun talking to my friends late at night, and I could bounce back pretty fast.  Even now as an adult, I have nights where I stay up reading until four or five or six in the morning (though as a mom, it is much much harder to bounce back from only a couple hours of sleep).  It actually makes birth work a little easier since I have never had much trouble from lack of sleep, and sometimes we are out all night and I get home, sleep for an hour, and then my daughter wakes up.

No biggie, right?

I didn't realize that lack of sleep and being able to function could be passed on to my children.

Even when I lie down for bed at night, I have to relax, try to empty my mind, and even if I am dead tired, I won't be asleep for about a half hour.  As opposed to my husband that is out like a light the second his head hits the pillow.

My daughter is like me, only worse.

I've heard of kids fighting IN their sleep, I've heard of kids that sleep very lightly and wake up at the slightest noise, but I had never heard of kids that actually fought for HOURS before falling asleep for naps or for the night.

Lucky me, my daughter is one of the latter.

When I was nursing her, it wasn't that bad.  She would fall asleep nursing, and we would nurse when she woke up.  When she weaned, she still had a pacifier, so she would wake up, put it back in her mouth, and go to sleep.

My sleeping peacefully and without bruises ended when we got rid of the pacifiers when she was almost eighteen months old.

This was also about the time that she cut out naps during the day.  Joy.

You would lie down with her, and she would fight you.  Kicking, screaming, throwing herself, more screaming, punching, biting, anything really to get out of the bed and not to go sleep.  When she was potty trained, she would say she had to go to the bathroom, or needed a drink of water, or she would scream that you were hurting her.

It got so bad that I didn't even bother trying to get her to nap.  If she was really tired, she would fall asleep on the floor, just conk out, but nothing I did could make that happen.

For two years, going to bed was a three to four hour fight, even with bedsharing.  It is really really hard to be a gentle parent (or even to feel like a gentle parent) when your child is screaming at you that you are making her bleed (which is never true) or when she is kicking you/biting you/hitting you.  The patience wears thin fast.

Pretty soon you just put off going to bed for hours, even though you know they need sleep, all because you dread the fight.  It's easier to stay up into the wee hours of the morning when they fall asleep on their own than to fight them.

We tried instituting a bedtime, we tried doing a ritual (brush our teeth, read a book, say prayers, go to sleep) but she would always want one more or the story wasn't right (even if SHE picked it), and it became exhausting.

We tried going to bed at the same time as her, showing her that we weren't doing anything exciting.  That didn't fly.

We were just at our wit's end.  I thought very hard about trying CIO, and realized that sleep fighting wasn't her way to push me away, and if I tried CIO, I would push her away without any reason at all.

I finally decided to talk about our sleep troubles with other moms, and I ended up crushed.  No one else that I knew had this much trouble putting their kid to sleep for this long.  They would look at me with pity and with a little bit of wonder as to what I was doing wrong because my child refused to sleep.

I felt like a walking time bomb ready to go off.

And then, I found it.  I found another mom that had the same trouble with her son!  I found a woman that, on a good night, fought for two hours to put him to bed.  I instantly didn't feel alone!  She is also a gentle parent, and talking to her, I realized I wasn't doing anything wrong.  My daughter is just like this!

My brother and his wife were staying with us for a couple days this week, and my daughter has started having really good days with going to sleep (where she is out within minutes without a fight!) and then has really really bad nights where the fight lasts anywhere from an hour to five hours.  Of course, every time they had seen her, she had great nights.

Finally, the gloves came off.  For an hour and a half, she fought me, while they were sitting in the living room.  I could hear their shocked voices, wondering what I was doing to her as she screamed, "Don't touch my owies! No! There's blood everywhere!!!"  (I am actually surprised none of my neighbors have called the cops on me because of what she screams while fighting.)

After an hour and a half, I gave up and took her back into the living room.  We sat on the couch with my brother and his wife, their eyes as big as saucers, and my daughter was asleep within a few minutes.  I could see the questions forming on their faces that they were too scared to ask.

"Are all kids like this, and no one tells you??"

I was able to calmly tell them that most children didn't do this, and mine is one of the select few that will punish me with her sleep habits for years.

And the thing is, saying it made it seem like it was all okay.  I knew that I wasn't doing anything wrong, that there is nothing physically or mentally wrong with her, she just does not like sleep.

Basically, what I want you all to know that have children like mine, you are not alone.

You may feel very alone when you are trying to get your child to sleep, or when they say they hate you, or kick or bite or punch, but you aren't.

Many of us are hiding on the sidelines because we feel it is our fault, and guess what!  It isn't!!

Not all children are the same, and even though it sucks so very much to have a sleep fighter, there is nothing that you did to cause this.  Some kids have trouble sharing, some have trouble eating vegetables, some hate water, and then some kids just do not want to go to sleep.

As parents, we all have something we hold in, something we wish we could do better or someway we could be better, and this is mine.

She is much better now than she was two and a half years ago, thank goodness, but those hard nights still make me wish I had done something different, even though rationally I know that I have done all that I could to fix this "issue".

I just need to back off a little, realize that this isn't about me, and go back to finding out and trying what works for her until sleep fighting is a thing of the past.

10 Alternatives to Crying it Out

My sister soothing Sydney

I see it all the time on facebook pages and  message boards - moms lamenting the torture of listening to their babies cry it out.  Nine times out of ten the mom is hating it.  Sadly, I occasionally see a mom happy to say the CIO worked and baby is "finally asleep."  What tends to happen is that most moms I know hate CIO, but eventually it seems to work.  Baby seems to cry less and less when he is left in his crib.  And to an extent the trick has worked.  Baby has slowly learned his crying won't work to draw his mom back in the room.  He's been conditioned to understand his crying won't elicit the attention he needs or wants.  He has learned helplessness.