Sleep and a Diaper Disaster

I've actually been meaning to do a sleep update for a few weeks now--as I've apparently made it my goal to complain about the same things on a semi-regular basis on here--but hadn't gotten around to it yet. But this morning, we had a minor disaster that was sleep related, so this seemed like a good time to touch on the subject.

I'm quite curious to see how Norah's sleep habits pan out over the years. As someone who never takes sleep for granted, and who understands that having a "normal" sleep pattern is important if one wants to be a productive--or at least functional--member of society, I've taken the job of hammering home good sleep practices in my children very seriously. With Gabe it was actually pretty easy. From the beginning, he was an early to bedder. Falling asleep at 7:00 in the evening came naturally to him (that has changed somewhat now, as it's not unusual for him to sit up in bed "reading" until 9:00 or sometimes 10:00 now, but he's still always in bed by 8:00 because, let's face it, there is no time of the day as wonderful as the part when the children are all in bed).

But Norah was a different animal. It took us several months to get her used to going to bed at 8:00 and waking up around 7:00. That part, at least, I think we've figured out. For now.

While I'm in the predicting mood, though, I'm going to go ahead and throw another one out there. I think there is a very good chance that Norah will end up being a night owl like me. I think it will become increasingly difficult to get her to go to bed early and wake up early. It's not that uncommon for her to sleep in until 8:00 now, and that's with her going to bed early. Right now, she is DEFINITELY not a morning person. She usually wakes up cranky (both in the morning and from her naps)--as if she needs her first cup of coffee in the morning before she's really awake--and she is a pretty terrible sleeper (which, I know personally, makes it about impossible to look forward to mornings).

But we'll see. This is my great sleep experiment. It's obvious that her body/brain are naturally pushing her towards being a night person/late riser, and I'm going to do everything in my power to change that through good sleep habits. We'll see which wins out in the end, nature or nurture.

My money is on nature, but it always is.

Anyway. Norah's overnight sleeping has still not improved. She's still up at least once and usually two or three times every night. And she still needs a milk bottle to go back to sleep. We've tried water or crystal light bottles to reduce her calorie intake (which she desperately needs) but she's gotten to the point where she will stand up in bed, screaming and crying, and throw those bottles out of her crib. Based on this, we assumed that she was getting hungry in the middle of the night and not just wanting the bottle to suck on, so we have tried to feed her right before bed time instead of normal dinner time. We've tried to make sure that dinner is her biggest meal of the day. We've tried . . . well, everything.

We are at our wits end. Well, to be fair, my wits ended a couple years ago, but you catch my drift.

Nothing works. We can't even drastically water down her milk because she can tell the difference (though I HAVE been able to get away with a 50/50 mix of 1% milk and water, but that's as weak as she'll allow without a middle of the night tantrum). We can't let her cry herself to sleep because, if she cries for more than two minutes, she pukes. Every time. And she still isn't old enough to be reasoned with (by this point, I really think that is the only way this situation is ever going to fix itself, is simply to wait until she's old enough to somehow be reasoned with).

To make matters worse, she soaks her bed every night. Because she drinks SO much and because she is SO ginormous (meaning we maxed out diaper sizes six months ago), she saturates her diapers by about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. Changing her would be nice, obviously, but getting her out of bed wakes her up enough that an hour on the couch downstairs is usually required to get her back to sleep again. And once she's wet, she's miserable, which wakes her up and perpetuates the cycle of problems.

Conundrum.

But about a week ago we realized something that we hadn't tried yet. Nighttime, "extra absorbancy" diapers. Yeah. Not sure how we hadn't thought of that one before. So I bought a bag and we gave them a whirl.

A week into this experiment and I have to declare it a non-decision still. It hasn't really improved her sleeping. She's still been up a few times every night. But, except for last night, her bed has been dry every morning (so that part was a success). However, she's also been suffering from an ear ache (and the whole family had strep throat over the weekend and we're just not starting to recover form it). So, being sick might be waking her up, too. Thus the indecision. We will give it a couple weeks and see how it goes. I SO help this reduces the number of times she wakes up to once a night if nothing else. Because, sweet lord, this is getting OLD.

So there's that.

But as I said before, when I got her out of bed this morning, her sheets were, once again, sopping wet. She had a rougher night than usual, going through three bottles, so I wasn't too surprised to find her waking up in a near-puddle of her own waste. But when I got her downstairs and undressed her to change her clothes and diaper, I discovered the real reason that she leaked all over her bed.

This is what diapers are filled with.

You can't see it very well in the picture, but her diaper exploded. This was just the pile of the silicony blurg that I managed to keep inside her PJs. She was covered in it from shoulder to toe. Thanks to the containment of her PJs, the little absorbent pellets couldn't escape, but they sure traveled all over the contained area, and then, of course, they escaped as soon as I unzipped her. They escaped all over the living room floor, and then over the path from the living room into the bathtub where we took a first-thing-in-the-morning bath.

This is probably a good argument in favor of cloth diapers, actually. Except it's an argument that would have fallen on my deaf ears after we tried cloth diapers for that month or so with Gabe. I'll take a coating of probably non-biodegradable sludge over constant diaper rash and swamp butt any day, thank you very much. Sorry environment, but thems the breaks.


OK, and I DO still have other pictures and videos that I should be sharing, but it will just have to wait until another day. Again.