Change

Change can be difficult.
Change can also be good.

When it comes to certain parenting issues, such as childbirth methods, breastfeeding, or teaching kids to sleep, to name a few examples, some people can feel pretty strongly that there is a right or wrong way of doing things. Personally, I try not to judge people based on whether or not they choose the same method as me. There are some things I think are better for children, but I recognize that what’s best for my kids and my family might not be best for someone else’s. There might be things that society or science says is the very best way to care for your baby, but if it makes the entire rest of the family miserable to carry it out, chances are, that’s not the best method for your baby. You have to weigh all the variables. Breastfeeding, for example, may be healthy, but if it makes the mother miserable or causes her such pain and suffering that it hinders her ability to cope, it’s better for the baby to be bottle fed and have a happy, healthy mother.

When it comes to sleep, though, it took me a while to realize and accept the fact that we had become one of those families who were making themselves absolutely miserable to try to do what we thought was best for the baby.

We had tried letting Eleanor “cry it out.” She was never a good self-soother (and to be honest, at the time, Mommy wasn’t much of a self-soother either), and we probably didn’t even go about it the right way. It was miserable. All it succeeded in doing was to help me firmly resolve that I would not let my children cry it out. I bought all kinds of sleep books, such as Dr. Sear’s Baby Sleep Book and The No Cry Sleep Solution. They were full of helpful suggestions to try to teach your baby to self-soothe, and we tried many of those solutions throughout the next year and a half of Eleanor’s life. Some of the suggestions just weren’t realistic, considering how out-of-it we were in the middle of the night when we were supposed to be carrying out a plan. Other suggestions we were able to carry out just didn’t get the job done. She still woke during the night and needed our comfort. Many times, she still wouldn’t allow Grant to put her back in bed.

Finally, after Eleanor was two years old, we got a little more aggressive. I rocked her, sang to her, and then put her in her bed while she was still awake. She cried and cried, begging me to hold her. I stayed with her the whole time, repeating sleep cues, trying to comfort her with words and touches, but never picking her up. It was long and difficult for both of us, but it was the beginning of her learning to sleep on her own.

Enter Phaedra. She was great at first, sleeping several hours and waking only to nurse and go right back to sleep. All that stopped when she was about four months old. She only wanted to sleep in Daddy’s arms while he was standing. Eventually, she let him sit down for the night, but he could try all night without success to put her in her bed without her screaming. I am not able to function without sleep, which is why Grant does the main part of the night shift with the kids. Grant can handle going through his day without a decent night’s sleep. But after several months with no change and no sleep for Grant (and little sleep for me without my husband in my bed), we knew something had to change. Grant can handle several nights of no sleep, but when it got to months, he wasn’t really himself. I pulled out all the old books to try to find a solution. It was frustrating. Their solutions seemed even less realistic now that we have an older sibling in the mix. Grant was too incoherent in the night to do some elaborate solution with slow results, and I couldn’t handle getting up in the night to do it either.

We were stuck. We couldn’t go on the way things were. We couldn’t find a no-cry solution that either of us could carry out, and we couldn’t wait around, hoping for results. My sister has had success with training her kids to sleep, so I called and talked to her for a pep talk. I think I knew what we had to do; it was just hard to admit it.

It took all sorts of justification for me to talk myself into letting my baby “cry it out.” I told myself she was a great self-soother, so it wouldn’t be as bad as Eleanor was. It’s not like I get her out of the car seat anytime she cries; she has to self-soothe. This would be just like a car ride where she had to soothe herself. It would only be bad for a few nights. It wasn’t abandonment; it was just a change. Change can be difficult to get used to, but even babies need to learn how to cope with change. Plus, even after all our work to teach Eleanor to sleep on her own without it being traumatizing, we had to go through a difficult process where she did cry. The only difference was that she was older and better able to communicate, so she understood a little bit more about why it was happening. She still didn’t like it one bit. The process was still like ripping off a band-aid, and it may have even been worse because she had such a long history of expecting us to comfort her to sleep. My mind was made up, whether I liked it or not.

We decided to start during spring break, when Grant could take some time off work. So, about three weeks ago now, we started sleep training Phaedra. We tried to do everything we could to prepare so the night would go smoothly. We explained to Eleanor that Phaedra might be crying more that night, and if it woke her up, she just needed to go back to sleep. We rented a movie I had wanted to see so I could change my focus while Phae cried. We had good snacks. We even got an air mattress out in the family room in case we needed to rest out there. Basically, we tried to make it almost worth looking forward to.

The night didn’t go exactly as I had hoped. The kids were tired when they went to bed. I had hoped to nurse Phaedra to sleep at the first of the night, and then let her cry if she woke afterwards. We did our nighttime routine, I nursed her, and she was wide awake. I tried to use our usual method of soothing her in order to get her sleepy before I put her in her bed slightly awake. That didn’t even work. She fought me, looking at me wide-eyed and alert. She didn’t want soothed; she wanted to be awake and play. After a little bit, I just had to put her in her bed and walk out. She played happily for a while, and then the crying started. Her cry got mad fast. I wanted to check on her to see if she was okay, but I worried that I was just trying to make up excuses.

I tried to restrain myself from going in to comfort her, knowing that it would only make her cry more afterwards. But I didn’t want her to go through it completely alone. Even if it slowed the process, I wanted her to know we were there for her even if we weren’t doing what she wanted us to do. After about a half hour, I had Grant go in to comfort her. He wrapped her blanket around her again and turned on “the fishies” (one of those ocean wonders toys that makes sounds like water and frogs). He rubbed her head for a bit, and she calmed right down. But after a minute, she got frustrated that he wasn’t picking her up and started to cry again. He came back out and we listened and waited for the crying to stop. I joined her in crying several times. Toward the end, she started groaning. She does this in the car sometimes when she’s tired. She’ll groan herself to sleep. Whenever she would start to groan, I would cheer her on, talking to the monitor, knowing she was starting to calm down. She groaned and cried, off and on until she fell asleep. It took another half hour after Grant comforted her, making the total time an hour. A while after I was sure she was asleep, I went in to check on her and put another blanket on her. Her breathing seemed to have a bit of a whimper to it, as she was still calming down, even in sleep. It made me feel bad for her, but I was glad we were past the worst part.

Grant and I stayed up for a while, watching our movie and wondering if she would wake again. We decided around midnight that if she was sleeping, we might as well be also. We went in, and I was going to do a “sleepy nurse,” where I wake her up just enough to nurse her so I wouldn’t worry about her being hungry other times when she woke up in the night. When I got her out of bed, I realized she was stinky. She must have pooped her pants at the beginning of the night while she was awake in her bed. Grant hadn’t noticed when he checked on her. I felt awful! My little girl hates having messy pants, so it must have been that much harder for her to fall asleep. I changed her, wrapped her in her blanket, and nursed her. I had no trouble putting her back into bed, but then I lied awake thinking about the three hours she had been in a messy diaper, and I cried some more. Rough night. As if I needed another reason to feel guilty.

The rest of the night went rather smoothly. She woke again around 2:30, and that time only cried for about a half hour. The days that have followed have only been better. Some nights have been thrown off by her teething or our inconsistency, but she really is a better sleeper now. The hardest part of this for me is the guess work. It’s hard for me to know if she’s crying because she is in pain or discomfort or if she’s just trying to fall asleep. And during the day, I don’t want to put her down for a nap unless I’m sure she needs a nap because I would hate to have her cry in her bed for nothing. It has been sad to let go of her snuggles as she would fall asleep in my arms. Now, she gets sleepy in my arms and then squirms, wanting me to put her in her bed. That part is sad, but it’s really nice to put her down awake and watch her sigh and fall right to sleep as soon as she hits the bed. Plus, Grant is back to his old self now that he’s getting sleep. I feel bad we let it get so horrible before we found a solution.

So, I had to change my mind about my parenting, but it all worked out in the end. I’m grateful to everyone who supported me through the ordeal. It feels like we made it! Whew!