Sleep Deprivation, Part 2
Monday, June 25th, 2012From Monday Mom – Neetika:
As I type this, Haley is in her crib, crying. Last week, I wrote about the deterioration of her sleep habits since an illness and recent teething. We had a few promising nights, but things went from bad to worse when her teething pain seemed to shift into high gear. Several nights included multiple wake-ups, with me holding her, rocking her and nursing her—which I was largely trying to avoid—for hours at a time.
We are adherents of the Cry-It-Out method, which some parents find controversial. There are many nuances involved, and I don’t think any one should attempt the system without doing a lot of research beforehand. After all, if you are not convinced of how and why the method works—you will definitely cave and not follow through with it. The basic idea is that after your established bedtime routine, you put your child in the crib and walk out of the room. The child then cries himself to sleep. You repeat this every single night. From what I have heard anecdotally, the child starts falling asleep almost immediately on the fourth night. We put this plan to use when Haley was about 6 months old, and it worked out beautifully. Of course since then, life has happened… and it was difficult to stick to the plan.
So now we are at an impasse at which we must start over again. I believe in this method because I have seen it work very well on Haley. I have witnessed her sleeping for 11 and one-half hours straight and become such a happy baby during the day. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. You never lose that instinct to protect your kid and keep them from being upset. But you also know that doing what is in the best interest of your child is the most important thing. Haley needs rest and a rested mommy.
Luckily, the cries have subsided, and my husband just showed me the monitor with the peaceful looking baby, sleeping. Thank goodness! I feel my heart rate slowly returning to normal.
