Back to the Drawingboard

Yesterday's nap was a disaster. Little Chub cried for an hour, so I took her out and we skipped that nap. Up to this point, all of my information on how to use this method had come from the internet. I decided I didn't like how much I didn't know, and Little Chub and I went to the library to check out Richard Ferber's book on children and sleep issues. I had read a lot of people's opinions that the "Ferber method" was harsh and cruel, and I had also read a LOT of people's opinions who said that he was unjustly criticized and they were so grateful to him for the help his book gave them. This is the method we used the first night, and what I thought I was using for the nap. It turns out that the page I was reading doubled the time that you can keep your baby crying in their crib for a nap, from 30 minutes to an hour. That's a big difference for a crying baby! That was the difference between Little Chub being sad and being hysterical. For her nap later that day, I nursed her to sleep in the bed like normal. She didn't seem to be treating naps the same as bedtime, so we figured it probably didn't matter much.

Then there was last night. We did our bedtime routine and put her to bed at a time that we knew she was tired. She cried for a little over an hour before she finally fell asleep. After we knew she was asleep, we kept hearing her wake up and cry for a few seconds before resettling and falling back asleep. This happened several times within a half hour, so I started to suspect that something was wrong. I asked Peter to go check on her, in case her foot was stuck or something, thinking maybe she was inhibited in her movement somehow by something, which would keep waking her up. He went into her room to find her sleeping standing up against the side of the crib with her face toward the door!!! How horridly sad! He laid her down and patted her for a few seconds and she fell asleep. About an hour and a half later, she woke up again, and he went in to try to comfort her, and she was so distraught that he ended up rubbing her for just a few moments until she fell asleep again. That was the last we heard from her until 8:10 this morning. That is the longest she has ever slept in her life! But, it doesn't end here.

All day today she has cried very easily, and most of the time, we couldn't even tell why. As Peter put it, "Our happy little baby has become everyone else's baby." She cries easily and loudly, and screams. She doesn't trust us. She has separation anxiety to (what seems like) the extreme. We were feeling very dejected today when we went on a little nature walk and she screamed and cried half the time, when she is ALWAYS sooooooo happy in her stroller. Then on the way home in the car, she screamed some more, as badly as though we had just left her in her crib alone. When it came time for her nap, we did her routine, and put her in the crib, this time savvy about the 30 minute idea for napping. Peter checked on her at 10 minutes, then 10 minutes later, while she was screaming worse than ever before, he went up and we officially ended the crying-it-out.

Crying is one thing. Distrust and unhappiness is another. Both are VERY sad. What started off as a really successful attempt to make a change has completely backfired. But we've learned a lot. In the past 24 hours, I've read a significant portion of the book mentioned above, which actually has a LOT of valuable information. Observations I've made by reading the book (that I already knew about, but have convinced me to make REAL changes) are:

#1: Little Chub is a natural night owl.
#2: On top of this, her "schedule" is pushed back to give her a pretty late sleeping phase for any child (even teenagers).
#3: Due to our flexible, everchanging lifstyle, her "schedule" pretty much doesn't exist, which makes it so that her poor little body/brain can't tell if she's supposed to be napping or sleeping for the night sometimes. This is responsible for instances (as mentioned in a previous post) where she takes a nap at 10pm and wakes up ready to play for hours, and can also be responsible for some of her night-waking.

A lot of people, upon seeing that we decided not to continue with the crying it out might believe that we have just given up (and maybe that IS a good way of putting it...), but we could not bear the heartwrenching, depressing pain we felt in witnessing the change of her everyday behavior (which really started yesterday). We KNOW there are better ways to deal with this issue, at least for this child in particular. I know if we had stuck it out, she would be happily going to bed within a week or two, but what about her behavior? That wasn't anything people had mentioned in the things I had read. My baby was HAPPY before, and I intend for her to be happy again, even if it means getting less sleep and changing our daily habits to adhere to a more rigid schedule. Incidentally, even though I got the longest stretches of sleep the past two nights than I've gotten in over a year, today I was more tired than I've been in a very long time because I got less overall sleep.

So, it's back to a happy baby, our previous plans with a little tweaking, and maybe a little bit more frustration. At least I can say I tried it and it didn't work, and the temptation will not be so great to just throw her in the crib. It didn't work for her, for US. We were blessed with a successful first night, and, in reality the second night went pretty well too. It's nice to know that even an omniscient God has the love and generosity to comfort a crying baby, even when the parents are going to quit in the end anyway. Strangely enough, I think we're all going to end up pretty happy in the end because we sure learned a lot from this.

Here's to the constant, teaching trial/blessing/responsibility of parenthood!

Traitor!

Even in the midst of my pleasure and gratitude for how Little Chub slept last night, I still feel little pangs of guilt, not only for making Little Chub cry, but for "ditching" my fellow co-sleepers and switching to the camp of crying-it-out. I feel like a traitor! But, like I said before, I love co-sleeping! It just wasn't working for us anymore. "Why should we believe you?" you ask. I don't really know how to answer that question.

Little Chub was not getting enough sleep, and we were starting to notice this in her everyday behavior. And of course, it was getting really frustrating for us that she was waking up so much and wasn't going to sleep well. The BIGGEST reason that I did the cry-it-out method is that I was getting a shorter and shorter fuse with her, and my patience was wearing thin. I really did NOT like the way I was snapping at her or getting frustrated at her when I wanted to go to bed but she just wanted to play. I want so much to be a good, happy mother, not a grouchy bear. I read so many different things that other people have done. I especially love reading other moms' experiences on http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/parents/. I'm trying to be a responsible parent and make decisions more for HER good than for mine.

And all this really is a post to convince myself that I'm not a bad mommy... But I AM happy with this. One night down, who knows how many to go? If it was like this every day, she would probably still be doing better than many other babies. We'll see how today and tonight go...

We Finally Did It

Well, I wasn't sure it would ever really come to this, but, we cried-it-out with Little Chub last night. We set her crib up in the second bedroom, started a bedtime routine, said goodnight and put her in the crib. I was SO CERTAIN she would cry for hours. She cried for 20 minutes. I am a firm believer in the power of prayer. We were very blessed in this situation! Peter went in to reassure her at 5 minutes, and then 10 minutes later, and we didn't need to go back in because she fell asleep. And that was that. She woke up 4 or 5 times and cried for anywhere from 5 seconds to 3 minutes, but nothing really awful.

The reason it came to this was not the frequent night waking, but the playing in the bed at bedtime. I have been working on getting her onto a nice reasonable schedule for naps and bedtime, but it has not worked at all! Yesterday, I took her up to bed to nurse her to sleep around 10pm (which is earlier than she normally goes to bed, but I had worked with the napping to make sure she was tired and would be able to go to sleep for the night). Everytime she was asleep and I tried to unlatch and sneak away, she cried and woke up and really wouldn't let me go. This happened for 40 minutes until she unlatched and sat up and started whispering happily and playing (which is how she wakes up for the morning, or from good naps). I came downstairs with Little Chub and Peter and I decided that she was going in the crib that night. Waking up for a nap at 10:40 is ridiculous for an 11 month old baby!

So, it wasn't until 12:30 that we actually put her in the crib for the night. At 8:15 this morning, I heard her awake in her crib, so I went in, took her out and nursed her until she looked sleepy, then I put her back in the crib. She cried for less than 5 minutes, and is still asleep right now, at 9:30.

We've decided to make her bedtime gradually earlier and earlier until she is going to bed at a "normal" time, to avoid having her cry a lot when she is not really tired enough to sleep. Right now, we are very grateful that things worked out so nicely! I'm so grateful for prayer. I know that this was made easier for her as an answer to prayer. He wants what is best for her just like we do! (That is not to say that He doesn't want it for the children it doesn't work so easily for, but that this was a direct answer that we were blessed with for whatever reason.)