I think it all started when, after having a few days of not very good sleep I decided to look online about sleep help. I read somewhere that if the baby is waking up a lot to nurse, to instead rock them for 2 minutes and they will usually just fall back asleep.If they are still hungry after the 2 minutes then feed them. Made sense to me, so I tried it... the night before my first day back to work... MISTAKE!
He fussed a bit for food, instead of nursing, I stood up and rocked him, because he was so fussy there is no way I could rock him in bed. And boy did that make him angry. He was NOT happy. I nursed, I rocked, I nursed, I rocked and he was STILL AWAKE. It took me almost 3 hours to get him to go back to sleep. I cried, he cried... it was a disaster. I haven't been so overwhelmed and lost my cool like that since he was very young. I had to just put him in his crib and let him scream, so I could collect myself as I cried in the other room. I finally rocked him in the rocker in the living room until he fell asleep and by then it was about 20 minutes before my alarm clock went off. Sigh. Frustration was all I felt.
When you are that tired and that run down and soo very frustrated all of these terrible thoughts run through your mind. What am I doing wrong? Why won't my kid sleep? Am I a terrible mother? Have I ruined him from EVER sleeping again? Is it because I'm nursing him? Should I stop for my own sanity? It sucks when you start to question your parenting and everything you've done thinking that maybe you went wrong somewhere.
Luckily I've had a couple days to
Somedays I feel like Colin has come along way in sleeping. He will go a few weeks with a few good stretches of sleep like 4 hours and I will feel wonderful in the morning and think, YES, he's finally got it. And then he will relapse, like this past week and get up every 2 hours again or even every hour. I'm sure you are thinking, how is that coming a long way with sleep, well I feel like he's come a long way because every night now for weeks, he has started off his night in his crib. He is usually awake and will fall asleep in his crib. To me that is progress, because he went through a stage where he wouldn't sleep in the crib at all, so starting off there and falling asleep there is pretty good. Granted, as soon as he wakes up he wants out... but we will work on it.
I am not a fan of Cry It Out. I am sure it is harder on me than on him, but we've tried it and my kid can cry for hours. He gets himself so worked up he can hardly breathe. I hate it and practically cry just as hard. So instead I put him in his crib almost asleep and pat his back until he falls asleep, sometimes I don't need to and he will just fall asleep. But it is after that first stretch when he wakes up that we have problems because I bring him to bed with us. I like cosleeping because it is easy. When he wakes up every few hours I just roll to my side and he nurses and goes right back to sleep and then I feel rested in the morning because I'm not really waking. Seems like a good plan to me... but then I worry that he is waking to often because he has an all you can eat buffet right next to him all night and just wants to snack or nurse for comfort.
I think what I need to do is when he wakes up from his crib, instead of bringing him to bed, try to lay him back down in his crib. If he isn't having it, nurse him in his room and then put him in his crib. That might be a new plan to start on my WEEEKEND and not the day before work! Ha! Then maybe he will get more used to his crib and less used to having me right next to him.
Although, I'm not going to lie, I will miss waking up with him every morning in my arms and watching is perfect little face sleep. I would gladly continue to cosleep... if he actually slept! But hopefully someday... after a nice nights sleep... I can go watch that perfect little face sleep in his crib, all I want! Lol
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