On Baby Sleep

Ha! I piqued your interest, didn’t I? You have a baby, or have had a baby that didn’t sleep through the night when he or she was ‘supposed to.’ Am I right? Well, if you’re here looking for the magic answer, you may as well click that little red ‘x’ in the top right corner of your window (left for Mac users). I don’t have the answer. What I am here to say today is, there is no magic answer.

When my daughter was a baby, she fell asleep eating at night just about every night. I had no tricks up my sleeve for her if she didn’t fall asleep eating. It meant we were in for a long night. When she was about 10 months old, I decided this dependency on bottles wasn’t going to work for me, so I started weaning her from her night-time bottle - started giving it to her earlier in the evening and then rocking, singing and dancing with her or patting her back until she fell asleep. This worked pretty well. I was able to basically just back off from these methods and she began falling asleep in her own. We had minimal periods of “cry-it-out” but we did ascribe to letting her cry sometimes. She seems fine. Sleeps through the night for about 11 hours and continues to take a 2-3 hour nap every afternoon.

Baby J is a whole different breed of kid. Be it that he’s a boy or just his personality, he is like night and day when compared to his sister. He cried a LOT when he was little. Except for his enchanting smile and snuggly personality, we may have considered throwing him out with the bath water. But, he did have his strengths - he has pretty much eaten anything I’ve given him and, in that way, weaned from nursing quite easily and by his own choosing. He has also been a good sleeper. He slept in bed with us when he was really little and then around 4 months, I started putting him in his bed at night and then keeping him in bed with me the rest of the night if he had trouble sleeping. He went so easily from co-sleeping with mom and dad to sleeping in his own bed - and has been sleeping through the night since he was 6 months old. Wonderful! From about the time he was 3 months old, James did not want a lot of fuss over bed time. I tried rocking and consoling him, but finally one day, I turned on some white noise and walked away - he had been crying for so long that mom needed a little break. Low and behold, just a few minutes later, he was sound asleep. He actually demonstrated a preference to “crying-it-out.” So, all has been well.

Enter an article I recently saw on a blog post about a woman who suffered from extreme morning sickness with her pregnancy that lasted all day. She went on to describe how weak she became, etc, and that she depended on her husband for everything. Then, she went on to describe that her husband would just decide it was her bed time, tuck her in, turn off the light and leave. Didn’t matter if she was thirsty or hungry or needed to use the bathroom. She tried calling out to him, but he just ignored her. Horrible, right? Well, about half-way through the article, I knew where she was going with this story. She was trying to paint a picture of how horrific it is to let your child “cry-it-out.” At the end of the story, she pointed out that while her morning sickness was a true symptom of her pregnancy, her husband did not treat her this way. It was a farce! Not a great method of getting your point across. But, it sure made me think…

What if my son began to resent me? To even hate me? What if he became a delinquent or socially mal-adjusted? What if he was unable to maintain relationships? Would this be my fault?

So, at 10 months of age, I stopped letting him cry in his bed. It has been disastrous. Today, while putting him down for his nap, I rocked him, bounced him, fed him, sang to him, patted his back, shushed him, etc… he continued to scream. I stepped out of his room to collect my thoughts and take a breath, thinking, “what the hell happened to this child?” I used the bathroom and strained my ear as I washed my hands… what is that? Silence? He fell asleep in less than 2 minutes. Ahhhh…. Could it be that the child knows what he needs?

The morale of this story is not to tell you that “crying-it-out” is the way to get your kid to sleep or that co-sleeping will work for every family. The morale of the story is, in the great words of my friend Jessie: whatever method works in order to get the most sleep for everyone in the house is the best method. Hey, maybe there is a magic answer; its just different for everyone.

PS, if you want to read the article I referred to, check out: http://womanuncensored.blogspot.com/2009/12/just-let-her-cry.html