Last night I decided to let Max cry it out...again. We have let him cry it out so many times, and it works, at least for a couple of days. Right now I feel like a horrible parent who tortures their child in the selfish hopes that I can get some extra hours of much needed sleep. The whole time he cries I'm online googling every baby sleep solution out there to ease my conscience, make sure I'm doing the right thing. My brain is so foggy from the incessant howling that all the letters on the screen seem blurry and my head feels like it is going to explode. What should I do? Am I traumatizing him for life, am I impeding his brain development by exposing him to all those stress hormones? Oh, the guilt.
Max used to be a great sleeper. In fact we were bragging to the doctor at his 6 week appointment that he was sleeping 8 consecutive hours at night. Such proud parents we were...I suppose we jinxed ourselves. Now he is so stubborn, he fights sleep like it is public enemy #1. Even after he "cries it out" he just plays and babbles in his crib. He is exhausted and his eyes are huge black holes, but he will not surrender to sleep.The problem with letting him cry is that we have to keep up a constant surveillance. He bangs his head, gets tangled in the crib slats, chokes, etc. Unfortunately J-P is dead to the world at night. Completely useless. The responsibility is all mine, but last night I couldn't take it. I needed his help. I shook him as hard as I could, got his attention and explained the situation. "I can't take this crying anymore, what should I do...should I just feed him?" J-P cleared his throat and in a very business-like tone said "Well, I guess that depends on the structural compartments of his civil authority." Brilliant. Why do I even bother?...and before I could finish my thought he was snoring again. I started laughing because it was the only thing I could do to keep from crying. Finally Max cried himself into the oblivion of sleep and I went back to bed. The lyrics to this BNL song played over and over in my head until I fell asleep.
Here is pic of Max sleeping through the night at 5 weeks. I turned the flash off so I wouldn't wake him up. He was so big he almost filled the whole pack n play. He outgrew the bassinet at 2 weeks, but we weren't ready to move him to his room so that's where he slept.
5 comments:
Michael didn't start sleeping through the night until he was 10.5 months. Until that time, I was up feeding him two or three times a night. One night, I decided no more. It took about a week, a horrible week of screaming two or three times during the night (an hour each), but he eventually started sleeping for ten hours straight. It was wonderful and worth that aweful week. We didn't go check on him though, as it made him more mad to see us and then watch us leave him. And if he is 25 pounds, he doesn't need any food during the night (at least that is what my mother in law and sisters in laws keep telling me) Good luck.
Oh, I feel your pain. This was always our biggest issue with our babies. I was never one of those moms that had a hard time letting her baby cry through the night, I was always counting down the days til they were old enough that I could do it. The constant screaming was horrible, and I never checked on them either for the same reason Michelle said, but they didn't do anything hazardous to their health like Max! I am so sorry he fights it so hard, you must be miserable. There is a book that my friends swear by that's called something like "Happy Sleep, Happy Babies" or something to that effect. I'll find out the real name for you. Anyway, everyone who tried it has the BEST sleeping babies in the world. I'm definitely doing it for my next one.
Oh, and I laughed so hard at J-P's ramblings in his sleep. So funny. Bill is notorious for this, he says the most pyschotic things in his sleep, and he'll even be sitting up looking right at me, swearing he's wide awake. Scary. What really sucks is he had to train himself to sleep through all the nurses and doctors when we were stuck in Utah with Macy being born so now he sleeps through EVERYTHING!!! But he does his best to help me out because he knows what his wife is like with no sleep!
Yeah, I have that book. I just finally starting to enforce all the stuff you are supposed to do. It's good, I would definitely suggest it for next time around. Last night Max slept from 7:30 to 6:30, so hopefully he is learning and it wasn't a fluke. Thanks for all the advice guys...
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