The truth is, I need a distraction.
It is 10:20 p.m. and my son is upstairs in his room "crying it out". So please forgive me if this entry is choppy and all over the place. It is extremely difficult to keep my train of thought flowing when I want to run up and hug him OR run out of the house and cry.
I feel horrible and am really not sure that blogging about is is going to make help me tune him out or make me numb to this knot that is welling in my stomach. I just hope that by the time I am done, he has fallen asleep.
I love rocking my little man to sleep. I would do it every night until he is too big to hold. It is our quiet time together where we cuddle. It use to be a wonderful 40 minute way to end my day.
I am not really sure where we went wrong but I feel we have created a monster.
In the past few weeks, it has taken Noah longer and longer to fall asleep. The other day, it took an hour in a half before he finally dosed off. Last night, with his daddy, two hours.
This can go on no longer.
He is old enough to know that it is time to sleep. He is old enough to understand that we will be there in the morning.
(So far there have been two brief moments of silence in 17 minutes and 49 seconds.)
I just have to keep telling myself that this is for the best.
I just have to keep telling myself that he is not crying because his fundamental NEEDS are being met (and yet here I am thinking that he is feeling neglected and that is need for love is being neglected).
I just have to keep telling myself that he is crying because this is not what he WANTS.
But as his cries weaken, not out of tiredness, but out of worn out vocal chords and as his cry changes to a defeated, high pitch howl. I feel I may cave.
And then his dad asks me "So what are you gonna do, let him cry until he falls asleep?" (A sentence that could spur a whole other entry in itself.).
I sit here and blankly look at the screen.
I read over what I have written.
It's been 26 minutes and 54 seconds, and only a total of four brief moments of silence.
I feel like a monster.
Do I cave now?
And if I do, didn't I just hurt him for nothing? What kind of a mother does that?
And if I do, what am I teaching him? Just to cry until I show up?
And then silence again...and for a brief moment I am relieved that I may be able to stop questioning myself.
And then more crying...and I feel worse.
It's been over half an hour.
This can go on no longer.
We let Paige cry it out when she was younger. I started only with naps. Put her down and then wait. AFter 10 min if she was not alseep I would go in, rub her back, i did not pick her up, and told her it was nap time and left the room. Wait 5 min do it again, each time waiting 5 min in between the times I went in. Sometimes it took a hour or so, but if you go in and give up by picking them up, they will learn that I will just keep crying and someone will pick me up. This worked for us and many other parents that I know of. Its hard, but you will appreciate the time that you had spent trying to put them to bed with the quite time you will get when they put themselves to bed. Good luck and if you need any help on this let me know!
ReplyDeleteEveryone we know who've had baby sleep issues solved them by using this book: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.ca/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child/dp/0449004023
By my count, there are around 8 new kids who are napping & sleeping at night with minimum fuss due to the book over the past year. Its value is in teaching you how to recognize sleepy signals in your own child (they are all different) and how to recognize the different things that might cause sleep disturbances over time. It's flexible on the strategies you use to enforce good sleep, so it's less judgy than other books I've found.
Hopefully you're past the bad moments you were blogging about, but just in case I thought I'd share.
I saw your post about the baby jogger jump seat... and I too am a frustrated mom who is about to have my second child and can not find the jump seat to go with my expensive city elite! Did you ever find a place to buy them. please let me know if you did?
ReplyDelete