Your eyes aren't deceiving you. That black picture is really my selfie for the day, any day. You see,we have a little situation on our hands. August is a great nighttime sleeper. He mastered sleeping through the night and hasn't looked back since, though he's outgrown his cradle and needs to move to his crib soon. That could occasion some regression, I'd guess. But no, the problem is napping.
Augie seems willing to take a good nap, just as long as I'm lying right next to him in the bed and he can nurse whenever it pleases him. Right now I'm calling this a "situation" and not a "problem" because it's summer and I just read as he sleeps. We both enjoy the closeness and I get to read for the coming semester's new class (African American lit). But I don't imagine his daycare will be quite so accommodating. Today I was able to stealthily remove myself for the last half hour, but that took a lot of work. So how do we get Augie to nap the way he sleeps at night?
I've thought about trying a modified "cry it out," but then I almost start crying just thinking about it. It seems that I've been totally persuaded by the Dr. Sears' rationale that says that cry it out hurts, confuses, and potentially scars babies for life. Ok, maybe he doesn't go that far, but almost. I hate the idea of little Augie crying because he knows that I comprehend that message and will comfort him and instead finding me nowhere in his tears. I hate the idea of him confused and alone and unable to grasp this turn of events. I really hate the idea of him silencing himself because he's found no response to his pleas. Is "self soothing" just a virtue adults invented so they could keep sipping their martinis in the den?
But if I can't stomach cry-it-out, where do I find myself (besides in bed at noon with a baby hooked up to my breast)? I checked the No-Cry Sleep Solution out of the library, but I read it in a fog of sleeplessness and had to return it. Any wisdom from you parents who either got over the guilt of cry-it-out or found any alternative path to the merry world of zzzzzzs?
2 comments:
Oh, I feel for you. None of our kids have been good nappers. As babies they all frequently only slept about 40 minutes at a stretch and didn't start sleeping reliably for longer naps until they were six months old. They didn't start sleeping for very long naps (1 1/2 - 2 hours) every single day until they were down to one nap a day.
We did have to let both of the girls cry it out eventually at night. It's very reassuring that they don't seem scarred at all, either in the short or the long term. I mean, they have their issues, but those seem to fully result from believing we are at their imperious beck and call and not the opposite. ;) (One of thing I've gradually started not to like about Dr. Sears is that I think he advances the cause of attachment parenting so much that he makes one paranoid to depart from his methods, which didn't always go according to plan--or at least, not with my little monkeys.) We finally had to do crying it out because they began to need to nurse more and more frequently to stay asleep at night, and we had exhausted other options. To be honest, our kids do so much better with enough sleep that I felt like doing what was necessary to make that happen outweighed the trauma (for them and me) of the initial phase.
Have you read Marc Weissbluth's Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child? It's the best sleep book I've read and gives different strategies at each stage (ranging from "let cry" to "maybe cry" to "no cry").
Okay, I'm commenting again. I feel like giving advice is pretty obnoxious because all kids are different and will all turn out fine in spite of the things we agonize over, but here's my method in case you haven't already found a solution: Enjoy what you're doing as long as you can. Then, a couple of weeks before you have to go back to class, see if there is anything besides nursing that helps put the baby to sleep (timing his nap as he's getting drowsy, motion, walks, cuddling, bottle feeding). Start doing a mix of nursing and that other thing at each naptime, and try to reduce the amount of time nursing and shift to only the other method as quickly as possible in each session, essentially accommodating him to being soothed by the other method. If he wakes up and freaks out when you pull him off the breast, keep rocking him or patting him or walking him. If he still won't settle down, don't worry--just nurse him very briefly again and then try to pull him off again while continuing to soothe him. It might take longer than just nursing to put him to sleep, but babies are pretty adaptable, and his physical need for sleep is on your side, and he'll start to learn to fall asleep without nursing.
My two cents. XO.
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