sleep chronicles, vol 1

Wanted to update all the blog followers on where we are at with the sleep training. We saw Dr. Weissbluth the Monday before Thanksgiving for a sleep consult - he is, as my friend in California whom also did sleep training with her challenging son, "the man" when it comes to sleep. The first thing he did when we started the session was turn to my husband and ask "how sleep deprived is your wife?," which I think says a lot about his practicing style - he recognizes the importance in a well rested FAMILY, as Cindy Crawford, one of his clients, says in his book. After looking at our sleep log (we had to keep track of all the hours Eddie was asleep, awake, crying and being soothed for a week) he confirmed that Eddie is a colicky baby - we like to say extremely fussy though because colic ensues that he screams bloody murder and cannot be soothed. Yet, due to our successful efforts, as the Dr. put it, we prevented him from crying as much as he naturally probably would have. He outlined a pretty simple plan for us to try to maximize sleep for little Eddie: put him to bed at 5:30 and only go to him throughout the night to feed him twice. During the day we can continue to soothe him to sleep as we have been in order to minimize crying and maximize sleep. We decided to wait to start the training until yesterday. And so far, it sucks.

I'm not going to go into details because I have realized that people can be very judgemental about what we are doing - yes, we are allowing our baby cry, and yes, it does feel cruel in a way, especially since my natural inclinations go totally against it. But we have been assured that it causes no medical harm and that it ultimately leads to a better rested, and therefore more astute, able to learn, child. And of course it is way harder on the parents than it is on the baby. Last night I left the house - this was recommended by the Dr. since it is usually way harder for the mother to hear her baby cry - and went out shopping with my sister and her friends. I tried to have fun - even had a beer! - and yet I was curiously texting my husband to find out how our baby was doing. Not good. After an obscene amount of time - way longer than any of the stories in the Dr's book indicated - he was still wailing away and even my husband - who up until this point had been the one very rational and calm about the whole procedure - was freaking out. I called Peyton, my doula, for advice. I called a friend of my sister's who is a pediatric nurse. No one was home. And then by some miracle as we were strolling down Southport St. I hear someone calling my name and it is Peyton's husband Cal...they were driving by and saw me walking. And I flail my arms and yell that I had just tried calling them and bolt across the street, somehow defying traffic without really looking. I wish I could have seen myself - a manic mother in pursuit. I felt like I was having a panic attack, a pain in my heart that took my breath away, and I was relived that, like an angel, Peyton appeared. Peyton and Cal calmed me down and offered sagely advice, but I was still left with the return home to my distressed baby, and an even more distressed Dad. Luckily the rest of the night went along quite smoothly - I fed him and put him back in his crib and he only whimpered for 5 minutes before falling asleep. The rest of the night proceeded similarly smooth - I got up to feed him at 12:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. and then he woke up around 7 a.m. He took his morning nap at 9 a.m. But the rest of the day he seemed totally off kilter and hardly took an afternoon nap, only snoozing for 15 minutes while feeding, until he napped at 3 p.m. for 45 minutes.

Now we are a few hours into Night Two and already Daddy Eddie and I are discussing aborting mission and devising a new plan. We feel as though we cannot take it anymore and we retrieve him from his crib, saddened to see a pile of wetness from his saliva and that he has gnawed on his fingers so much that they are red. And yet he looks at us and smiles so big and merry as if unaffected by it all. He has such persistence that the "crying it out" method doesn't seem to work on him...maybe he is superhuman...seriously, we both had the thought simultaneously and keep thinking that maybe our guy is an exception to the rules of crying, i.e. that at some point the baby gets tired and falls asleep. At least this process has been successful on one front though, and that is transitioning him out of the family bed and into his crib...he is sleeping in his crib, which is progress. Maybe we just have to allow him to get a tad older before he is ready to self soothe and fall asleep unassisted...