I’d be willing to bet that every parent has a topic that they obsess over. Maybe it’s breast feeding or child care or cloth diapers. Mine? Sleeping. I have read the internet forwards and backwards on the topic. I’ve absorbed articles on co-sleeping, Ferber, extinction, graduated extinction, cry it out (or CIO in those lame forums), sleep crutches, overtiredness, baby sleep cycles… seriously, the list is endless. I’ve even contacted sleep consultants. Why? Because I’m a lunatic. And also because I LOVE sleeping.
You know who doesn’t love sleeping? Babies. Now that I have one, I really have a lot of rage for that old saying, “sleep like a baby.” Because babies don’t sleep. They wake up every couple of hours because, well, God only knows. Hungry? Maybe. Dirty diaper? Perhaps. I saw this color today, one that I had never seen before, and it was the sweetest color in the history of the universe and now I can’t stop thinking about it? Also a possibility.
Napping. On the couch. Across my lap. Again.
The point is, baby’s gonna do what baby’s gonna do. But despite that, I attempted to try a little something called, “sleep training.” There are books and websites out there that claim if you use one of 5,000 different techniques (see list in first paragraph), you can train your baby to put themselves back to sleep at night, thus eliminating the need for you to get your ass out of bed and begin guessing as to why you and baby are up at this undignified hour. Because, yes, midnight, 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. are indeed undignified. My baby is extremely hard to guess lately because when he gets up he’s not pissed about it. He just wants to talk, sing, and essentially throw a middle of the night party. So cute and so dumb.
However, instead of tackling the horrible nighttime hours right off the bat, I thought that I would attempt fix to our little napping situation and pray that my work trickled over into the P.M. You see, my son naps like a boss. At daycare. On weekends, he falls asleep in his crib just fine but then pops awake after 30 minutes and thinks that’s acceptable. The only way we could get him to actually nap for a reasonable period of time is to lay him across our lap and let him pin us to the couch for hours. Me and my back were so over it. So last weekend, I embarked on sleep training*.
I guess you could say I did Ferber, except like I said, my baby doesn’t cry when he wakes up. He talks. And talks. And talks. And rolls. And fidgets. And talks. And clangs his pacifier along the bars of his crib like a tiny prisoner. And talks. For 30+ minutes he’ll just sing and talk and move. So I let him. I just left him in his crib to play and do whatever. However, after the 30 minute mark he finally cried. Up until this point, I had never made it past 30 minutes before because I’d lose all hope and retrieve him from his cage. Turns out, I was just not patient enough. After he cried for 5 or so minutes, I put his pacifier back in, rubbed his tummy for about 10 seconds, left the room, and waited. Well, guess what? About 10-15 minutes later he fell asleep. FOR TWO WHOLE HOURS. I gotta say, watching the situation unfold on a monitor was kind of like playing a sport, and the poor boy doesn’t even know yet how competitive his momma is. But guess what? I won today, buddy. I won. Sleep training worked.
A typical napping scene.
Believe me, I realize the emphasis I should be putting on “today.” Because tomorrow, he’ll do something different. He’ll BE somebody different. I have to constantly remind myself that he’s only been in this world 5 months. Every face, color, action, texture — blows his mind because he’s never experienced it before. You know how sometimes you wake up at 5 a.m. because you have that big meeting or idea and you just can’t sleep you’re thinking about it so much? Well those big moments happen all day, every day for him. It’s a lot for a little noggin to handle.
So, while I absolutely HATE waking up 2-3 times a night, I also realize that it’s just a phase. And I’m happy that my baby wakes up happy — just ready to tell me all about the amazing things he saw that day or dreamt about that night. We’ll just work towards the goal of having these conversations over a nice dignified breakfast at 8 a.m.
*Now, folks. All I’m doing here is saying what seemed to have worked pretty well for me. What I’ve realized by reading all those articles and forums is that people are WAY opinionated on this topic. The co-sleepers are die hard. The cry it out folks say it’s the only thing that worked. Some people have those babies that sleep 12 hours straight and don’t move a muscle all night. And everyone hates on everyone for just doing the best they can. So my point is this; don’t hate. Congratulate.