Here’s how it all started: Read Part 1 First
I don’t know exactly when or how it happened, but Elsa was soon back in our bed.
Elsa back in our bed by 4 months.
She gradually started waking more frequently and, in my delirium, I would bring her back in bed with us. She was still sleeping between me and the edge of the bed and as she got better at rolling, this started to feel less and less safe. I debated buying a guard rail or a co-sleeper or putting our mattress on the floor but the fact still remained that I was also physically uncomfortable sleeping with her. The whole thing was reminiscent of the end of my pregnancy when I couldn’t roll over and I would sleep 10 hours in the exact same position on my side. I would wake up feeling like I had a bed sore on my hip – and when sleeping next to Elsa, this familiar bed sore feeling resurfaced because I couldn’t really move in bed with her pressed up against me.
For about a month, she was back in bed with us. And the night time routine remained the same: nursing and rocking. Roseanne was a nostalgic thing of my past as John was back in the bedroom and I didn’t want to turn on the TV in the middle of the night. It was taking longer and longer to put her to sleep because she would cry the first few times I would put her down and I would have to start the whole nursing/rocking routine over again. John and I were seeing less and less of each other because I was nursing and rocking for close to 2 hours every evening. She was probably getting up 3-4 times per night at this point, but I was still maintaining and felt OK during the day.
And then both of us got sick. And Elsa started to look like this all day:
Feeling awesome.
I had strep throat and she got an ear infection and life became really miserable for about a week. And somewhere during that week, she started getting up more and more during the night. And she started napping less and less during the day. Every time I would put her down to sleep after nursing, she would cry. Sometimes she would cry immediately, and sometimes it would take 20-40 minutes for her to wake up and start crying. During the day, she was now napping for about 40 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes in the afternoon. She was grumpier during the day (even after we had finished our antibiotics and the doctor said her ears looked fine). Granted she was teething, but she never seemed in any great discomfort when I would go to pick her up – she just wanted to be in my arms, attached to my breast. Sometimes I could nurse her and she would fall back asleep, but for the most part, she would just wake up and that would be the end of the nap.
Every time I put her in the car, she fell asleep and I would have to decide if I was going to continue with my errands or just turn around and go home. I was getting more and more frustrated and had less and less time without a grumpy baby on my hip. Not to mention, I was getting less and less sleep at night. For about a week, she was up every 2 hours. And then every hour and a half. And then every hour. Finally, one night, she was up every 40 minutes and I started to get desperate. Really, really desperate.
Someone lent me Babywise by Ezzo and Bucknam which was a disaster. In my fragile, sleepless state, the Babywise was too much and too harsh. Just let them cry? For hours? Teach these spoiled brat babies a lesson! The authors were so self-righteous about the ills of co-sleeping and bed-sharing and nursing to sleep. They had basically written a book to tell me I had done everything wrong up until this point. And as I listened to Elsa cry in her crib, I cried. And I cried some more. And I became furious at everyone around me who advocated this “crying it out” method. John sat with Elsa in the rocking chair while she cried. Eventually, I went in and nursed her to sleep and we all had a terrible night with much sniveling. The next day, John hid the Babywise book from me.
Still only sleeping for 40 minutes at a time, I went to the library and checked out every book I could find on baby sleep, but only books that I knew didn’t advocate “letting them cry it out.” I just couldn’t do the crying. I got Nighttime Parenting and The Baby Sleep Book by Dr. Sears and The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. For a day or two, as I read, I felt better. They described the kind of baby I had and explained why she was getting up so frequently. It appears that, whenever Elsa entered a light-sleep phase (which we all go through periodically throughout the night), she would get restless because she was accustomed to having my breast in her mouth. When she discovered it wasn’t there, she would wake up all the way and was unable to fall back asleep without nursing.
I tried to implement the solutions in the books and we were back to waking every two hours – which was better than every 40 minutes – but which was not ideal. And, to be honest, I was still so delirious and depressed, that I couldn’t even really implement the strategies – it was all too overwhelming.
Meanwhile, I was bemoaning my sleeplessness to anyone who would listen. And EVERYONE told me to just let her cry. Most people were surprised I hadn’t tried it yet – Like it was such a simple, no-brainer solution. Perhaps it is because Elsa almost never cried as a newborn; remember, she slept 20 hours/day and the minute she made a peep, I nursed her. So even letting her cry for 5 minutes seemed insurmountable.
So every time someone told me to let her ‘cry it out,’ I fought hard that I just couldn’t let her cry. I even crafted a blog post in my head entitled, “Why I can’t let my baby cry.”
I had tons of arguments:
On a personal level, letting her cry in her crib – even for a couple minutes – made me feel like my soul was ripping apart. Extreme? Yes. But I am often a creature of extremes. And when she was crying, I got inexplicably furious at John . . . like somehow HE was the one responsible for all this! The whole “crying it out” thing was just NOT right for our family.
It’s so unnatural to let a baby cry! My breast makes her feel better in an instant . . . why let her scream unneccesarily? And her request seemed so reasonable. She wants to be with me! Her mom. Who loves her and keeps her warm and safe and full of milk . . . she was just being smart!
Gorillas don’t let their babies cry! They nurse on demand and their babies don’t holler in their cribs for hours. (The fact that I’m not a gorilla seemed irrelevant.)
Show me the research! There is no research that shows that “crying it out” works OR that it is safe. Granted, most American babies cry it out at some point in their lives and there doesn’t seem to be any related epidemics . . . BUT, there is no research!
If I let her cry it out, she will have an unnecessary fear of sleep.
I agonized. For weeks. It drove John nuts as he moved farther and farther into the “LET HER CRY!” camp. Things got rough between us. I was getting progressively more miserable as I slept less and less. Elsa, too, seemed worse for the wear – she couldn’t stay awake in the car, she was fussy and she was tired!
And so – we arrive at the place that I never thought possible. The “Let her cry” place. I was about to step off the cliff and “ferberize” my child. . .
This brings me to another parenting discovery. Before I had a child, I had hundreds of VERY firm opinions about parenting and what is “right” or “wrong” for children. I judged parents for the choices they made and I self-righteously assumed that, as a parent, I would do everything a certain way. And then I gave birth. To a child. To an Elsa. And I think this is pretty universal: Once you have a child, you better expect to find yourself sometimes doing what works – and not necessarily what you always thought was “right,” back before you were a parent. Not always, no. I have stuck to my guns on quite a few things. And I have crumbled on quite a few others. . . like how to put a baby to sleep. And here I am. Writing in my blog. Because my daughter is taking a nap. A LONG nap . . .
Continued in . . . Sleep Chronicles, Part 3: Baby is Asleep!
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