To Sleep Or Not To Sleep...Or Pump.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted and this may be a bit too much information for y’all, but I had to share. This is basically a rundown of the past…four months?

When Murphy was born, everyone always said “oh you must be tired, huh!?” And we always responded, “no, not really?” Because we weren’t! Murphy was an incredibly great sleeper! She went to bed around nine or ten, woke up to feed around 2 and then again around 6. Life was easy!

I have been exclusively breastfeeding Murphy for the past nine months. In the first five months of her life, I had a pretty decent milk storage and we would give her Tommee Tippee bottles once, maybe twice a day. It was nice because there were times where Matthew could feed her and put her to bed and I’d be able to relax, take a bath, or whatever I wanted to do that I couldn’t do during the day. When Murphy was 5 months old, we left Georgia and we didn’t plan well. All my milk storage went bad. I had nothing. (You hear the saying “don’t cry over spilled milk”. Well, it was over 50 ounces of defrosted milk. I was crying.) We stayed in a small bedroom with six suitcases and three people. We had Murphy sleeping on the floor so she wouldn’t get used to sleeping with us (since she had already been trained to sleep in her crib) but she would always end up in our bed since we didn’t want her crying and waking the others.

We got to Germany, my pump “blew out”, I didn’t have a way to store any milk and Murphy hadn’t had a bottle in over a month. My milk supply was so low that I started having JUST enough to nurse Murphy and sometimes I felt I didn’t even have that much. I came across a lactation brownie that Ivy Carnegie makes while we were in GA and I knew it had helped so I knew I needed to make them again. And seriously y’all, they worked. They helped me out significantly. So much that I had to buy a Haaka just to be able to relieve myself and we had milk to give to Murphy. Or at least try.

Life got hard y’all. We were living in a hotel for a month. Our baby had a crib right next to us. In the same room. If she woke up crying, she’s just stare at us! How could I not get her? How could I not just bring her in our bed? I couldn’t let her cry for even a minute without feeling guilty because all the other hotel guests were trying to sleep too! So, baby ended up in bed with us. AGAIN! Needless to say, I didn’t sleep good for a solid two months. And honestly, neither did Murphy! She’s a mover and she didn’t get to do that. 

Fast forward to now. We finally got into a “house”, which is really a two story apartment on the second floor. Our landlords are quite possibly the nicest people we have ever met. They are Germans and the lady is a nanny. She loves Murphy and talks to her in German (score for us!) so hopefully she’ll be picking up “kleine mousy” soon. But now the real tough stuff. 

During the transition of moving, my chances of pumping were low. As was my milk. We were on the move all the time trying to see family or eat at all the places we’ve been wanting to so I hardly ever pumped. When I did, it was ME giving Murphy the bottle to put her to bed so that made no sense to her and she would fight it. We basically got to the point where she wouldn’t take a bottle. ANY bottle. 

While living here in Germany, I have hit the local Edeka DOZENS of times looking at their bottle section. We tried bottles that our friends lent us. We tried tons of different ones until I came across this post one day. Someone said something along the lines of “my child wouldn’t latch to anything but me until I found the bottles”. That sounded so familiar I told Matthew that we had to try. There was no other option! If it didn’t work, we’d give up and ONLY breastfeed till it was time to stop. Well, Evenflo bottles happened to be our magic! She latched. She took a freaking bottle after two months or rigorously trying everything! I literally cried at the first bottle she took. And she’s been using those ever since. We really only get to give them to her when we are out of I happened to pump at a random time and had it in the fridge.

Now to Murphy’s sleep. Goodness. Once she got into her crib her in our new house, she took to it like nothing! She knew her bed. Which was awesome (and kind of heartbreaking because it made me wonder if she just hated sleep in anything else since?). We had zero expectations since she was in the worst sleeping environments for the past two months but she did pretty good. She got up once or twice throughout the night pretty regularly and while it wasn’t the worst, it started wearing me down. Then teeth started coming in and she’d be up every two hours or four times a night and I was getting my shit kicked in! Life got SO HARD! I had talked to a girlfriend whose baby sleeps like a freakin champ (12+ hours a night) and I’d always ask “HOW!?” She told me they would CIO (Cry It Out). He learned to self sooth and now sleeps great! I thought that I could never do that but I was also so tired that I basically had to. We started doing it at nap time because I could guarantee she was tired. And it worked! Murphy actually sleeps pretty freakin good and puts herself down well. Every now and then there is a fight but if she struggles too hard for too long, I go in and put her to sleep myself. 
At night, there have been days where Murph will sleep 12-13 hours straight!! But then there are other nights where she’s up three hours after she went down and HAS to have me get her. Matthew will go in to help out some nights and she cries bloody murder!! (Talk about tough-mama just wants to sleep and dada just wants to help mama!)

We’ve gotten to a point where I’ve said “I can’t do this. She needs to be sleeping through the night!” So I bought a book. A baby book! It’s called “Get your sleep on” and a fellow mom suggested it. Within a few pages, they started talking about CIO. I was glued to it. I started to learn what could be fixed and implemented it. Last night!

(Rewind: I made Ivy Carnegie’s lactation brownies last Thursday. I’ve been slowly eating them throughout the weekend but noticed I was always feeling full! So I’ve been pumping and it’s actually been pretty convenient to have a bottle for baby when you go to dinner! You can actually have wine with your pasta! Yesterday I had my last brownie and I was full throughout the day.)

I nursed Murphy to sleep and put her down around 815. I think it was around 3am this morning, I woke up FULL TO THE RIM (if that’s a thing in boob terms) and Murphy still hadn’t! I was in awe! (Bad timing huh!?) Well I ended up going back to sleep because let’s be honest, I was catching up on sleep! I didn’t have time to pump right then! I think it was around 447 that she woke up crying. Super bad timing! Matthew started to stir but I told him to wait because there are times she’ll wake up and just go back to sleep. After a few minutes she hadn’t but I remembered the book. It gave me instructions on how CIO worked. So it said to leave her! And without thinking, I mentioned that to Matthew (feeling nice and macho) and he held me to it. Ten minutes went by and I was in full stress mode wanting to get her, nurse her, all the works but Matthew told me to wait. If we didn’t let her figure this out now, it’ll never fix her problems and I will forever be up in the night! Well guys...she freaking went back to sleep!! And I had the ability to pump. TEN OUNCES. THE SAME AMOUNT OF MILK FROM EACH SIDE!!! (This never happens!! My left side is my lazy side!! I’ll get two ounces out of that side normally!)

So Murphy slept because of the book, I pumped really well because of the brownies, I was able to type this all out for you instead of go back to sleep and all I can do is thank Matthew (again!) for holding down the fort and not letting me give in! Hopefully this will be a better, more progressive process but I’ll keep you posted. (Oh, and I ended up being able to go back to sleep!)

xo,
MK