Sleep Progress (or lack thereof)

Well, I have been so good about feeding Cooper.  (Gee, that sounds dodgy!!  What, lady, you want a pat on the back for giving your son food?!?)  He has been having 2 meals and a snack or 3 meals every day.  And his sleep?  Well, it's worse than ever!!  We're up to 4 or 5 wakings per night!!!

Yesterday I took him to a maternal health nurse.  I was sure he was fine, but just wanted to make sure that the crazy wakefulness wasn't due to some health issue.  She wasn't particularly helpful.  She said he seemed perfectly healthy, and gave me some strategies for dealing with the sleep.

First strategy:  'feed him more'.  She said at his age he should definitely be having 3 full meals per day.  (How long ago was it that you weren't to start your baby on solids before 6 months?  Now by 7 they need to be eating like an adult, with just 3 breastfeeds per day?)  She suggested pasta etc at night to try to fill him up more before bed.
 - Hmm, well, I've been feeding him almost 3 meals a day, and the first time I tried thick stodgy porridge before bed he was up 5 times that night, one of them for 2 hours.  But, ok, I'll keep trying.

Second strategy:  'don't let him associate breastfeeding with sleep - never feed to sleep, and when he wakes at night, don't feed him back to sleep'.  She said that, yes, I'd have a few bad nights, but he'd get the hang of it really quickly.
- Ummm, a few bad nights?  What do you call what I'm already having, lady??  I don't know how much worse I can handle!  I mentioned that I tried rocking him back to sleep without a feed - I was successful one time, but he was up again 20 min later, so I just fed him then.  'Ah, see, you need to be consistent.' 

That, and a comment to Cooper about having 'mum wrapped around your little finger' made me feel like a terrible mum who just gives in to bubs whenever because it's easier.  I questioned myself, am I just a big softie?  Do I give in too easily?  Perhaps I do at times, but seriously, when you're rarely getting more than 1.5 hrs sleep at a time, even if he settles after 'just' 20 or 30 min without a feed.... 20 min feels like eternity when you're wrestling with a screaming, thrashing, 10kg baby and you're so tired you have trouble keeping upright anyway.  And to know that without a feed, he's likely to be up again before you're even back asleep.  Seriously... I just don't think I can do it!!  So I give in.  Even if that makes me a bad mum.

Towards the end, though, she said "I know it's tough.  My daughter was like Cooper."  "Oh right, so what did you do?"  I asked.

"Um, oh, well, I just kept feeding her back to sleep!"

Right, so there's the textbook answer of what we should do, and there's the human response of what is actually realistic.

So, I'll keep going with my little strategies... trying to do as much as I can, but in the end, just doing what works for the moment.

Oh, for the record, she suggested his sleeplessness could be due to a combination of factors such as teething, separation anxiety and high intelligence... apparently smart babies often don't sleep so well.  I'm going with that - the problem is just because Cooper is a fricken genious.  That makes me feel better about it all!  ;D