This has been a rough week. I'm not feeling well. Sinus problems again, and I've been extremely fatigued. I wake up in the morning, and I feel like I haven't slept all night and Navarre is 2 months old again. She is actually sleeping great through the night, so I should be well rested. I'm not.
I go to the doctor; she gives me stuff for the sinuses, but thinks the fatigue is something else. She sends me for bloodwork: B12, iron, thyroid, etc. I doubt it's anything like that, so who knows...I think 5 months of no sleep may just be catching up with me, but we'll see what the results say.
Last Saturday we started new sleep training techniques with the baby. Having a Child & Youth Study degree should be an asset in raising a baby, but I find myself thinking back to all of the child psych classes I had and worrying that her crying or us laughing at her whining/crying at times is having detrimental affects on her personality development and ability to trust others...then I get a grip and keep laughing (or I try to). For those unfamiliar with different sleep training techniques, different doctors advocate different methods. There are also nurses and experienced mothers who have published widely successful books on the subject too. There's the No Cry Sleep Solution...your baby should go to sleep on its own without crying because you love your baby and it's secure, yada yada yada....there's the Baby Sleep Book saying getting your baby to go to sleep happy and not crying is the best way and it doesn't matter if you have to rock, soothe, drive around with, stroll the street with, break your back with, or nurse your baby to sleep because she will grow out of that...I could go on and on.
Well, guess what...watching Dr. Phil has taught me that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and if we don't ever put this baby down to sleep on her own, she'll be 2, 3, 4 years old waking up in the middle of the night wanting Mommy or Daddy because she woke up and we're not there to help her back to sleep. Sorry, but Mommy gets a bit psychotic without sleep (as some can testify to in the first months of her life).
I'd like to reclaim the night for Jamie and myself. So, I broke down and got Dr. Ferber's Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems book. Good god, don't tell a nurse or child specialist that I've done this. This is the equivalent to pulling a Michael Jackson and dangling the baby over the rail for these people. Because they say Dr. Ferber advocates the "cry it out" solution, where babies are put in their crib and allowed to just cry and scream until they fall asleep.
Well, this is not what he advocates, and the "specialists" and nurses use scare tactics to get mothers and fathers away from Dr. Ferber. He advocates a progressive waiting approach to break sleep associations, so the baby will learn to put herself to sleep without mommy feeding her or daddy rocking her or sucking on a binkie, whatever the particular association is.
So, I read; we planned, and we braced ourselves for a few nights of pure hell. We started last Saturday. We did your bedtime routine with Navarre and put her down in the crib awake. She cried for 3 minutes; we went in and comforted her without picking her up; she cried a few more minutes and went to sleep. Great!! Jamie and I are doing the Dance of Joy! The next night it was a similar result. The most she cried all week at night was bout 10 minutes. It has been wonderful. She's only waking up once around 4 or 5 am to eat, then goes back to sleep. Jamie and I have our nights back!!
Naps are another story. I think she isn't completely exhausted enough to not fight the nap and go to sleep as easily as she is at night. So, she hasn't really been napping, which makes for an extremely cranky baby at times. She did take a couple of 2 hour naps, but that's about it.
It's Friday, which means Jamie is here during the day on the weekends to help with her and can feed her at 4 am. Consequently, I catch up on sleep and can do other things during the day. And, drumroll please....she's actually napping right now. We'll see how long this lasts.
Have a great weekend!
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