I am in the process of night weaning Gwen. Again. I night weaned her in January and it went swimmingly. She was sleeping better and longer at night. But it all changed at the end of February when Gwen was admitted to the hospital for a week. She exited the hospital physically healthy, but as a paranoid, emotional wreck. It was an understandable change in disposition. All she knew was that people randomly came into her room and hurt her (starting IVs, giving injections,etc). So when she came home she decided to sleep with one eye open. And every 30-60 minutes she would open both eyes and cry just in case someone was trying to sneak in and do a procedure. I did what I had to do to get us through that time, and I started feeding her at night again.
After a few weeks, her sleep stretches started lengthening once again. We moved her from her crib (which we were never able to get her to sleep in after her hospitalization) to a queen sized mattress on the floor of her room. She can sleep by herself without fear of harm from falling from a bed, or one of us can sleep with her. As it is, I have been sleeping with her. I began night weaning yet again and would not feed her before 5 am. We were doing well with this, until she ended up in the emergency room last Wednesday night for dehydration secondary to vomiting and diarrhea. The ER docs put her on zofran and we took her home with instructions to get her to drink as much as possible. Since she refused all fluids but breast milk this meant that I was once again feeding her at all hours if the night.
By the weekend she seemed rehydrated, so on Saturday night I decided that it was time, yet again, to night wean her. Things were going great until 1 am at which point she woke up crying and signing for milk (Gwen does baby signs and her favorite sign, that she does most often and that even appears now to be a nervous tick, is milk). In the past when I have night weaned her I would either pretend to be asleep or would rub her back until she would fall back asleep. This, historically, has only taken about 5 minutes each waking. Little did I know that miss Gwen was getting her molars and with that had developed a new level of determination in regards to getting her milk. So for the next 4 hours she tried everything her 16 month old mind could think of to get milk. She first laid next to me and cried. Then she signed for milk. Then she tried sitting up and screaming while continuing to sign for milk. When that didn't work, she crawled over top of my body and cried on my other side because maybe I would hear better from my other ear. Still, no response. I had tried between 1 and 2 am to rub her back, but it seemed to anger her more, so I decided it was best to keep my eyes shut and pretend to sleep. When all other attempts to receive milk had failed, Gwen came up with a brilliant way to communicate to mommy, who of course couldn't see her signing for milk as mommy had her eyes closed, that she absolutely positively needed milk at that moment. She took a page out of the Anne Sullivan/Helen Keller play book and did the sign for milk on my cheek because she thought that it wasn't that I was ignoring her plea for milk, but that I couldn't see that she wanted milk and if she did her sign against my skin and I could feel that she wanted milk then she would finally reach her goal. While she demonstrated great ingenuity, she did not get milk until 5 am.
Last night she was awake for 2 hours, once again signing for milk against my cheek, and did not get milk until 6 am. Keith will be taking over the night weaning shift on Wednesday night and I wonder if she will try her new trick of signing on his cheek that she needs mommy for milk.
No comments:
Post a Comment