Shelby has gotten into a bad routine. She will typically nurse at about 8 pm and fall asleep. I will put her in her crib, and about an hour and a half later, she is up again. We then play this game that goes something like this:
1) I nurse her.
2) She falls asleep.
3) I go to put her in her crib and she wakes upon being placed inside.
Steps 1-3 are repeated for about an hour until she is finally asleep for the night. Well, last night I had had it. I have attempted to let her cry it out a couple of times, but never made it past the 5 minute mark. I realized though that she has got to learn to go to sleep in her crib, not in my arms. I felt horrible. Why should she be punished for a habit I taught her? Anyway, I had Jeremy put her in her crib, shut her door, shut our door, and turn down the baby monitor so the screams weren't so loud. I then laid on the bed with the pillow over my head and cried. She actually only cried hard for about 5 minutes, then it quieted down to a whimper with intermittent screams for about 15 minutes. We then waited another 10 minutes before going in to check on her. I cracked open the door and immediately started crying again. There she was, slumped over in the corner of the crib, with her head leaning against the rails, fast asleep. I would have taken a picture but I didn't want to wake her up. It was a sad sight indeed, but we had made it through our first night of crying it out.
For some reason, when I thought today about her crying it out last night, I remembered a video I had seen a while back about this swimming technique used to teach small babies how to float on their backs in the event they fall into a pool or some other body of water. I can't make up my mind whether the video is cool or disturbing. I guess it is good that they teach babies how to do this, but the problem I have with the video is that they let the baby sit in the pool crying for over 5 minutes. I mean, after a minute or two, we've got the idea. Was it really necessary to put that baby through that for that long? I had a hard enough time letting Shelby cry it out in her crib. I don't know how any mother could have been sitting there letting their child cry it out in a pool. Check it out and let me know what you think:
4 comments:
i cried the first time i saw that video. seriously how could the mom let her baby sit there in the water for so long. did you hear the baby's breathing. he was getting so exhausted. i do think that it is a good idea to have your baby learn this swim-float-swim technique, but i wouldn't want to be there for that lesson.
Oh, that crying it out stuff is HARD! I remember getting to that point with Tyler and crying myself too. That is why I tried to much harder with Sam to just put him down instead of get used to me holding him to sleep (which is hard because you just want to snuggle those sweet little ones!!). But I just didn't want to do the crying it out again if I could avoid it.
And yes, that video is WAY disturbing, I think. I remember seeing it and it just kind of creeped me out. A crying baby in the water is just a freaky thing and you just want to go pick him up. Ugh!
I hated how the man who eventually got the baby out of pool smiled this smug little smile- like 'see, everything was okay'. Who stands there and video tapes that?! I don't care if they're 'trained' to do that- you could hear how worried the baby was in that video.
About the crying it out stuff- I didn't have a hard time only because Peyton cried ALL THE TIME as a baby and I needed a reprieve especially after he had been fed and changed and didn't need anything else. I also didn't want to get him attached to me putting him to bed since I knew there were nights I wouldn't be able to, whether I was out or Troy and I were on a date or whatever. We have some friends who let their baby sleep with them and he was still sleeping with them up to the time he was almost 4 so that was another motivation for me not to let Peyton get night time attachments. I can see how it would be really hard though- especially if Peyton wasn't a crier already, it would have made my heart hurt to hear him cry. Just know it doesn't last forever- I promise! She'll sleep through on her own soon.
Sadie was 10 months old and i was STILL nursing her in the middle of the night. She didn't need it and would wake up sopping wet in her diaper. I did it because it was the ONLY way she would go to sleep. I had to hand control over to Jared because I was too much of a wuss to listen to her cry. He started a routine with her: bath/story/help daddy turn off the light/take lovey (one of my undergarments) and lay down in bed. She cried for 2 minutes and he would go back in there and comfort her for a few seconds, return her to her crib, and leave. Usually she'd cry again for another 5 minutes and he'd repeat the process. Then he'd stretch it to 10. After that she'd go to sleep! She slept through the night for the first time in her life when we let her cry a little and learn to fall asleep by routine rather than by nursing. She didn't need me to help her get back to sleep in the middle of the night because she taught herself how to soothe herself. This crying thing took about 4 nights before we could just lay her down and she would go right to sleep. She's 19 months now and sometimes everynowandthen fights a little before bed, but 95% of the time, putting her down is easy.
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