Oh help,
I'm feeling horrendous about myself.
My darling boy, as a newborn baby, cried and cried and cried all through the nights. Every night, non stop, for 12 months.
I had him in his moses basket next to my bed. I would cuddle him and try to comfort him until he fell back asleep. Sometimes he'd feed from me, sometimes not. Then I'd place him back in his moses basket, he'd sleep for an absolute maximum of 15 - 20 mins and then he'd wake up crying/screaming again and wouldn’t stop for 2 or 3 hours despite me comforting him. Eventually he'd fall asleep for 15 - 20 mins and then wake up and re-start crying/screaming for hours again. This would go on all night long. Every night.
DH moved into spare room and left me to get on with it because he was working but I had a year off work for mat leave.
My next door neighbour banged on my front door one night at 3am and started arguing at me about how cruel I was to let my baby cry all night. I answered the door to her with my baby in my arms, he was crying loudly as I was holding him.
I talked to Midwives, Health Visitors and was referred to a sleeping clinic, and I tried all the different interventions suggested, but nothing helped.
At the time, I kept on thinking that my baby needed to co-sleep with me. It felt to me that he was settled and happy whilst physically in contact with me at night, and distressed when he was separated by being in his moses basket.
But I was a first time mum, I was exhausted, I'd had a very traumatic emergency birth with him where doctors and midwives were running round the room shouting out that we were going to lose him if we didn't get him out of me within 2 minutes, he wasn't breathing when he came out, I couldn't hold him because he was taken away for emergency intervention for his breathing, and I carried the trauma and stress from his birth for months afterwards, if I'm being honest it's still there a bit all this time later. No-one at the hospital or afterwards ever talked to me about the trauma I'd been through. So anyway I was terrified of having him in my bed next to me as a little baby. I had a big, deep, squashy, heavy mattress and I was scared of him rolling over in case his tiny nose and mouth went into the mattress and stopped his air entry. I'm a really, really heavy sleeper at the best of times, and the more tired I was getting, the more heavily I was sleeping in those 15 - 20 mins sections in between him waking up crying for another 2 hours. So I was scared that I wouldn't wake up if he rolled over, or that I wouldn't hear if his breathing pattern changed. And I was scared that I might roll into him if he was on the mattress next to me. So I kept him in his basket.
As he grew bigger, we set up a big wooden cot right next to my bed, one of those cots that converts to a toddler bed later on. It was physically touching the side of my bed, and I dropped the side guard so that I could put my arm across and put my hand on him to settle him when needed. But the crying and screaming all night carried on, doing the same cycles as I've described above. Looking back, my health visitor kind of gave up on me. I remember requesting another visit from her and I showed her a log I'd been keeping of how many times he was waking and crying every night, by now he was 10 months old and not sleeping for more than 15 mins at a time before another 3 hours of screaming.
I still didn't co-sleep.
I thought about it a lot, but my HV advised against it and my best friend, a mid-wife, lectured me long and hard against it multiple times.
So I kept him in his cot next to my bed.
And spent a year without sleeping through the night.
I was exhausted each and every day.
I should add at this point that during the day times he was a happy, smiling, laughing baby who brought me so much joy and love and happiness that this carried me through the exhaustion. He literally never cried in the day, he was so happy and content every day, so many people would comment all the time on what a contented and happy baby he was! He only cried and screamed at night.
At 12 months old, I said to my DH "I'm going back to work in a few weeks and if I can't sleep before a day at work I won't be able to function ".
DH said "OK I'll sleep with him then, you sleep in the spare room".
Next morning, DH said "He slept all night long. He started crying in his cot at 9pm so I put him in bed with me, we laid next to each other and both slept soundly all night! He didn't wake up once all night, and woke up smiling!".
And he co-slept every night after that and slept through whilst sleeping next to us.
Fast forward 10 years and he's been diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder.
I'm on a constant learning journey with him about this.
But now he's old enough to articulate himself, he has told me that he physically needs to sleep right next to me or DH, that it helps him regulate his senses, that he cant sleep if he sleeps on his own.
He's such a lovely boy, who struggles with SPD.
Why did I force him through a gruelling year of intense distress and upset every night for the first 12 months of his life? Why? Why didn't I listen to my instinct which was telling me he needed to co-sleep? Which he himself can now tell me? Why did I insist on having him in his basket and cot, when actually all that crying and screaming was telling me that he hated it?
He suffers from anxiety now. I've been told it's part of his SPD. But I think it stems from 12 months of being made to feel anxious every night time by being placed in a different sleeping space from where he actually wanted to be.
But I was so tired, I couldn't think clearly, and I had so many people around me telling me not to co-sleep.....and I listened to them all.
I am carrying this guilt like a heavy burden in my chest, and it's horrible 😞.