I've been putting it off for months. Any excuse would do. Oh, I miss holding him. Oh, he's got an ear infection -- I don't want to force him to cry when he's sick. Oh, he's got a cold and he's teething and I don't want to increase his discomfort. Oh, I'm traveling soon, and I don't want to disrupt him further when Mommy's away. Anything to avoid resuming the sleep training process.
But the truth is, I'm a pussy. I hate hearing my baby cry. All I want to do is pick him up and console him.
It's time, though. He'll be 6 months old in a week or so, and he weighs almost 17 pounds, so he doesn't need to eat every 3 hours during the night -- he just uses the bottle as a sleep aid because he doesn't know any different. Because I haven't taught him anything different. And he's been generally fussier at bedtime, particularly when he's overtired. My feeling is, if he's going to fuss anyway, he may as well do it in his bed rather than in my arms.
Last night when we put him down, he cried for almost an hour. I started crying about a half hour in, as well. It totally sucked. We would go in to check on him and pat him on the back ever 10 minutes or so, and he would be rolling from side to side, completely pissed off. It was so hard to listen to and watch, especially knowing that all it would take to calm him down would be to pick him up. But we stayed strong, and he fell asleep eventually.
I gave him a bottle at about 11:45 because he hadn't eaten much for dinner, and then he slept until about 2:45 in the morning. Once again, it took him about 45 minutes to fall asleep, with me checking on him every 10 minutes. He cried and cried, and it was brutal to listen to, but I didn't cave, and then he slept until 7 in the morning and was his normal smiling self.
I'm not looking forward to tonight, but plenty of people have assured me that it will get better. Soon, I hope.
Hang tough!
ReplyDeleteTheoretically, it should take 3-4 nights, which in the grand scheme of it all is the blink of an eye.
I somehow managed to fuck it all up when I tried (my son, like my husband, does not seem to require the same amount of sleep as a normal human and would cry for over 3 hours at a time). I have a 5-year old who still wakes up every single night.
I should have listened to my pediatrician who told me to put a lock on the outside of my son's door when he was three. I honestly believe that if I had done so, I'd have a son who slept through the night.
You're doing the right thing. Be strong.
It gets easier and easier, I swear!
ReplyDeleteI did the same thing, cried while Walt cried. But I bit the bullet and it only took 2 nights of prolonged crying. The third night he woke up for 5 minutes, fussed, turned over and went to sleep.
Now he sleeps from 7PM to 6AM and he's the happiest baby . SO WORTH IT. Once in a while he'll wake up after a few hours because he didn't eat enough, or he'll decide it's time to start the day at like, 4:45AM. But mostly it's 7 to 6.
It took 3 days. On the fourth (last night), he slept from 7:30 until 5 in the morning, without making a peep. Unreal. Now I have to work on myself -- I'm so conditioned to wake up every few hours that I don't sleep much. I was up at 3:30 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep, so finally I got up and read a book.
ReplyDeleteGlad to know that I'm not the only mother of a 5 year old who finds it necessary to get up a 0-dark-thirty every freaking night because his "eyes won't stay closed." But a cup of milk & a trip to the potty usually quells him. Now that t-ball season has started, he's more pooped that a dirty Huggies!
ReplyDeleteHang in there, Wendy J. The best is yet to come!
Sherice