The New Normal...Without an Alarm Clock

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, I had a little bit of trepidation about no longer tracking LB’s feedings.  After our latest round of doctor’s appointments, all signs pointed to me needing to let go and just let him be a normal kid.  He can now have a normal kid day for meals – breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner (kids already eat a lot don't they?) – without me writing anything down.  He can sleep for 10-12 hours at night without being woken up to eat. Granted, we still need to have a general idea that he is eating regularly throughout the day and we’ll still need to keep close tabs when he is ill, but we don’t have to track every morsel quite so closely on a day-to-day basis when he is well. 
 
Our older (not affected by MCADD) son had given up his middle-of-the-night nursing and was regularly sleeping through the night by the time he was about 6 months old.  Although it was only less than 3 years ago, the concept seems completely foreign to me now after parenting a child with MCADD.  “He can really sleep ALL NIGHT LONG?” I asked our metabolic specialists.  “Yes, he can safely go for 10-12 hours now,” they reassured me.  Wow, 10-12 hours is kind of like an eternity when your last year has consisted of gradual steps forward from feeding the baby every 2 hours, then every 3, then every 4…  Whatever will we do with this much sleep?!

This new philosophy on his feedings has been both terrifying and liberating.  Even though our trusty alarm clock doesn’t ring at 3:30 a.m. anymore, my internal alarm clock still does.  I still wake several times during the night with my first inclination being to look at the clock and figure out how long it has been since LB’s bedtime bottle.  Instead of springing out of bed to feed him, I now have to talk myself out of going in and feeding him just in case (which I am successful at doing about 95% of the time) or merely creeping into his room to check on him (which I am successful at doing about 50% of the time). 

It has only been a week since we stopped keeping track of his food intake in our notebook and stopped setting the alarm at night and I’m already sensing some differences.  To all outward appearances, I’m sure he’s just a normal toddler to everyone else, but knowing that I can hand him a sippy cup of milk without measuring how much is in it or calculating how much he drinks is a definite source of relaxation for me.  I'm starting to see LB as a regular kid instead of as a baby to be cared for with extreme precision and diligence.  In addition, I’m starting to see LB relish his overnight sleep.  He is still waking once per night (and I’m still feeding him when he wakes up), but he seems to be sleeping more restfully and waking up more happily with each passing day. 

Our plan forward is to let LB drop the middle-of-the-night feedings on his own.  If he wakes up, we’ll give him 4 oz of formula (which is quicker and easier to deal with in the middle of the night than having to run to the kitchen for milk). Our older son dropped his nighttime feedings on his own without crying it out and I’m confident that LB will do the same when he is ready.  It might take a while considering how artificial his overnight sleep schedule has been to date, but I know it will happen eventually.  It’s only been a week and I’m already seeing him rest more peacefully, so it might be sooner than we think, too.