I need sleep!!

Hale really hasn't been the best sleeper since he was a couple months old.  First I sort of chalked it up to newborn-ness.  His first few days of life he slept like a log but then after that he seemed a typical newborn.  Then after the newness went away I chalked his small stretches of sleep up to him being a hungry little chunk.  He was still up every 2 hours at night to eat.  I can probably count on one hand the amount of times Hale slept for more than 3 hours straight at night.  Then as he got even older and we should have had him in a crib in his own room, instead of our own, I figured he would improve once we could make room for him in another room.

More recently things only seemed to have gotten worse.  We were in this hopeless cycle of Hale waking up every hour and a half(maybe 2 if I was lucky, 1 if I wasn't) and me being so completely tired that I just brought him to my bed and fed him laying down while I fell back asleep.  Logically I knew that if I could get up and feed him on both sides he would probably sleep longer but I was just physically unable to do it.  There were a few times I made myself feed him on both sides and as that resulted in maybe an hour more of sleep for him I couldn't keep it up for still being way too tired to function.

A couple weeks ago Mark was out of town for the week so it was up to me to get up with Hale every single time he woke up.  Hale seemed to be at his absolute worst that week.  I was so desperate and every night I was praying to God(begging Him really) to PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE let Hale sleep so I could sleep so I wouldn't be a grumpy beast in the morning and in turn make my kids suffer for my inability to function like a rational mom.  I was on my own that week and knew there were gonna be at least 2 more weeks with my husband on the other side of the country and me dealing with all 4 of my kids all alone.  I knew I needed sleep!  I prayed and prayed and Hale still woke up every night and there were even a couple nights interrupted by Bracken waking up as well.  (Along with the Hale not sleeping very well my hormones were also a little out of whack.  And it wasn't just affecting me, it was affecting Hale too.  It was normal for my kids to be affected when that time of the month was rolling around but Hale seemed to be affected the worst and sometimes I felt like I was feeding a newborn again with the way things would hurt.)

Near the end of that week after a long night and lots of prayers I knew that something needed to change.  The way we were currently going just wasn't working and I couldn't function like that.  It wasn't fair to me and it wasn't fair to my kids.   The world we live in right now puts SO much stress on breastfeeding and doing everything naturally that it seems to make people forget what a blessing it is to have something like formula exist so that when stuff like nursing fails there is something there for our babies to still survive and thrive on.  Mom's already have enough on their plate then to be made to feel guilty for their inability to breastfeed or for choosing a different option for their child.  Because of such things I don't think it really even entered my mind to start giving Hale formula.  I breastfed, it was relatively successful, my baby was fat, it didn't really seem like there needed to be any other options. But that day I KNEW that switching Hale to formula was the right thing to do.  Not halfway like giving him a bottle of breast milk at night etc.  I knew that we needed to switch him to formula.  I was a bit concerned about the cost of formula and the difficulty that would be involved with switching Hale to a bottle.  None of my breastfed babies took bottles.  They all adamantly refused anything that wasn't me(and that included binkies).  So I talked to Mark about it and I am grateful for such a supportive husband because he told me not to worry about buying formula at all, if this is what we needed to do to improve things then we would do it.

Our prayers continued to be answered as the transition to giving Hale a bottle was almost painless.  Saturday morning, a week and a half ago, I stopped nursing Hale and started pumping the milk out.  I was gone for most of the day and he maybe got an ounce or two from the bottle but he wasn't giving in.  Thankfully he wasn't screaming or crying and was in a relatively good mood.  By that evening he finally decided to give in and drink from the bottle and more than doubled what he had drank the rest of the day.  By the next day he was drinking his bottles with a bit of formula in them.  By a week out he was drinking his night bottles with no breast milk in them at all and today I decided to stop adding any milk to all his bottles as I am almost done needing to pump.

I expected to feel a lot of guilt about this decision but except for a couple moments in the very beginning I haven't really felt any.  There has been a bit of sadness about nearly being done but despite that I know this was the right thing to do.  The second night we added formula to Hale's bottle he slept for 6 hours straight.  He's been getting about 5-6 ever since and last night he slept 8 1/2 hours for me.  8 1/2 hours straight without having to get out of my bed at all!  Just thinking about how much better last night was compared to 2 weeks ago when I was up pretty much every hour kinda makes me wanna cry and it definitely makes me wanna thank God for hearing my prayers and answering them.  Oddly enough Hale has also decided that now he likes a binky as well.  Go figure.

And here's the happy boy :)