As Mandy said in her previous post, we are in the process of trying to get Thomas on a better sleep schedule since he ultimately needs to be able to get to sleep and return to sleep on his own (neither of which is happening right now).
Many of the leading sleep experts advocate strategies that involved allowing a baby cry under controlled conditions. A fair number of other parents that we know and trust have used these strategies and told us that they have led to positive outcomes.
Most seem to have healthy well-adjusted children.
Anyhow, before moving to such a regime we first had to convince ourselves that it really was the best thing for Thomas. In the end we decided that this approach - while excruciating for everyone - is probably the most efficient and compassionate ways to get things on track. And so we began.
We have been using the method outlined in the book that Mandy referenced. Its theory is that once the baby is down, you don't return to the room (for naps you return after one hour, if the baby hasn't gone to sleep). Quickly the baby figures out that crying for attention doesn't work and they go to sleep. As you can imagine (or in many cases know), this is tough for everybody, but typically a family has a few miserable days and then things begin to fall into place.
Well, we got a good dose of misery last night. We put down Thomas around seven and retreated downstairs. For three and a half hours he cried with only a single half an hour break. At ten thirty we decided that we had had enough and I went in. He was in quite a state and had at some point thrown up all over his bed. Although the books say that this can happen, and suggest calmly cleaning things up and putting the child back to bed, I felt absolutely awful, especially not knowing how long ago he had thrown up.
Intellectually, I remained committed to continuing. Emotionally, I felt unworthy to even hold him. He went out like a light once we took him into our bed, but I couldn't get to sleep for a long time. I wasn't beating myself up for my intentions (we're doing this for his own good), but I was questioning my judgment. Was this really the right thing?
So, this morning we held a strategy session. Unpleasant though this episode was, we were still prepared to continue. We did, however, revise our tactics. We're still letting him cry it out, but are checking at regular but increasing intervals (Ferberizing).
Over the course of the day we tried napping four separate times, but we only managed two twenty minute naps (which are widely considered to be too short to really count). I put him down around twenty minutes ago, and he is still crying.
Anyhow, thanks all of you who wrote or called over the last 24 hours to offer your support. It means a lot and it's good to know that others have walked this path before us.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Crying it out
This blog is about to get, as André put it, "grittier". If you're not interested in grit, well then stick to the posts with pictures. I still have to put up the Christmas/New Year pictures and Cayman pictures - the posts are written or half-written... sigh - so there are plenty more feel-good posts to come. But I'm typing along and avoiding the main issue here, which is sleep.
Actually, to be more precise, the issue is not sleeping. To date, Thomas has been an ok sleeper, but not a great sleeper. We've made progress with our various "gentle" methods, but 4 weeks of travel in the last 5 weeks did not help us establish any real routines. And I start work on Monday. (Yes, I promise another angst-y post on that any day now.) So we need to sleep - and Thomas needs to sleep. And even the gentlest of sleep books agrees that any one of the various "cry it out" methods is the fastest.
Fastest, however, is not easiest. We let Thomas cry two or three times in Cayman because he was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open - and each time he fell asleep pretty quickly. Somehow I hoped he had already learned how to sleep and he would just naturally sleep when we got home. He didn't. Sunday night, our first night back, we did our routine & put him to bed and he cried for about 20 minutes. Hard but not awful. Monday night, similar thing. I thought we were golden. And then came last night.
For the record, we are using the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Marc Weissbluth as our guide. And also for the record, I have read or skimmed at least 4 other sleep books. My friend Louise gave us the Weissbluth book before Thomas was born & I actually read a bunch of it. Of course, I stopped at the 3 month mark because I assumed we'd have it all figured out by then. Our baby was going to be a good sleeper, no doubt because we were going to be perfect parents. Ha!
So last night was night 3 of Weissbluth (which sounds so much better than "cry it out"). He warns parents that night 3 can be a "revolution" where the child figures out what is going on and really begins to protest. Thomas screamed for HOURS. For 3+ hours, to be precise - with a few quieter moments in the middle. We were trying to do the gentler method, so we were going in to him about every 20 minutes to pat his back. Every time he would reach his little arms up and practically beg to be picked up. We resisted. Then, when we left, he would scream even louder. It was excruciating.
After more than 3 hours, he fell asleep - for 45 minutes. Then he woke up and screamed for another hour and a half. This time we left him alone. He fell asleep again for a short while and, when he woke again at about 1 am (I think - time had really lost its meaning by this point), we gave in and let him come into our bed.
And if that weren't enough, we're doing this at naptime, too. So we put him down this morning and he screamed for an hour - then André soothed him to sleep and he managed to get 20 minutes in. Now we're in the middle of another screaming nap (though he did drop off for 20 minutes near the beginning).
This is the worst thing I've ever done. I've read and read and read and I have to believe that this is ok for him. I've talked to so many of my friends who've done this with their children and have kids who sleep well and are not traumatized that I have to believe that this is the best solution in the long run. I know people whose children won't go to bed at ages 4 and even 8. I don't want that for Thomas; I don't want him to have trouble sleeping on his own for years and years. And I know that most of the adults I know cried it out at some point in their infancy. Even more, I know that it works - the flat out truth is that for most kids, crying it out leads to sleeping through the night.
But I don't know if this is the right way to teach Thomas to sleep. I worry that this is just parental laziness: after all, we could have kept on with our slow way of teaching him; we're really doing this because we are tired, not because he is tired. He was learning; and he wasn't crying like this. And as much as I want reassurance, I get a little freaked out sometimes when other moms who've done this are enthusiastic - it makes me think of fraternity hazing rituals: I went through this awful thing and survived so now I want you to go through it, too.
And I don't know how much longer I can listen to him cry. André keeps trying to get me to leave the house and go to a café to work, but I can't do it. I know I need to prepare for next week and I know André's right, but I just can't abandon my baby. If he's going to cry and cry and cry because of a decision we made, I feel like I owe it to him to be here. But I'm just sitting here crying and writing this so I don't even know if staying here is the right solution. André claims that I must have inherited some sort of Catholic guilt complex; he threatens to peruse my family tree for Catholic ancestors. My Protestant Irish ancestors would turn over in their graves!
I should probably add that even after hours of screaming last night, he was still a happy little guy this morning - not clingy or scared or anything. And even after his first "nap" this morning he was still playful and happy. So I have zero evidence that he's being negatively affected by this - except the crying when he's supposed to be sleeping.
Ok, enough, I'm going to go try to plan a French class. 10 more minutes and I can pick him up.
Actually, to be more precise, the issue is not sleeping. To date, Thomas has been an ok sleeper, but not a great sleeper. We've made progress with our various "gentle" methods, but 4 weeks of travel in the last 5 weeks did not help us establish any real routines. And I start work on Monday. (Yes, I promise another angst-y post on that any day now.) So we need to sleep - and Thomas needs to sleep. And even the gentlest of sleep books agrees that any one of the various "cry it out" methods is the fastest.
Fastest, however, is not easiest. We let Thomas cry two or three times in Cayman because he was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open - and each time he fell asleep pretty quickly. Somehow I hoped he had already learned how to sleep and he would just naturally sleep when we got home. He didn't. Sunday night, our first night back, we did our routine & put him to bed and he cried for about 20 minutes. Hard but not awful. Monday night, similar thing. I thought we were golden. And then came last night.
For the record, we are using the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Marc Weissbluth as our guide. And also for the record, I have read or skimmed at least 4 other sleep books. My friend Louise gave us the Weissbluth book before Thomas was born & I actually read a bunch of it. Of course, I stopped at the 3 month mark because I assumed we'd have it all figured out by then. Our baby was going to be a good sleeper, no doubt because we were going to be perfect parents. Ha!
So last night was night 3 of Weissbluth (which sounds so much better than "cry it out"). He warns parents that night 3 can be a "revolution" where the child figures out what is going on and really begins to protest. Thomas screamed for HOURS. For 3+ hours, to be precise - with a few quieter moments in the middle. We were trying to do the gentler method, so we were going in to him about every 20 minutes to pat his back. Every time he would reach his little arms up and practically beg to be picked up. We resisted. Then, when we left, he would scream even louder. It was excruciating.
After more than 3 hours, he fell asleep - for 45 minutes. Then he woke up and screamed for another hour and a half. This time we left him alone. He fell asleep again for a short while and, when he woke again at about 1 am (I think - time had really lost its meaning by this point), we gave in and let him come into our bed.
And if that weren't enough, we're doing this at naptime, too. So we put him down this morning and he screamed for an hour - then André soothed him to sleep and he managed to get 20 minutes in. Now we're in the middle of another screaming nap (though he did drop off for 20 minutes near the beginning).
This is the worst thing I've ever done. I've read and read and read and I have to believe that this is ok for him. I've talked to so many of my friends who've done this with their children and have kids who sleep well and are not traumatized that I have to believe that this is the best solution in the long run. I know people whose children won't go to bed at ages 4 and even 8. I don't want that for Thomas; I don't want him to have trouble sleeping on his own for years and years. And I know that most of the adults I know cried it out at some point in their infancy. Even more, I know that it works - the flat out truth is that for most kids, crying it out leads to sleeping through the night.
But I don't know if this is the right way to teach Thomas to sleep. I worry that this is just parental laziness: after all, we could have kept on with our slow way of teaching him; we're really doing this because we are tired, not because he is tired. He was learning; and he wasn't crying like this. And as much as I want reassurance, I get a little freaked out sometimes when other moms who've done this are enthusiastic - it makes me think of fraternity hazing rituals: I went through this awful thing and survived so now I want you to go through it, too.
And I don't know how much longer I can listen to him cry. André keeps trying to get me to leave the house and go to a café to work, but I can't do it. I know I need to prepare for next week and I know André's right, but I just can't abandon my baby. If he's going to cry and cry and cry because of a decision we made, I feel like I owe it to him to be here. But I'm just sitting here crying and writing this so I don't even know if staying here is the right solution. André claims that I must have inherited some sort of Catholic guilt complex; he threatens to peruse my family tree for Catholic ancestors. My Protestant Irish ancestors would turn over in their graves!
I should probably add that even after hours of screaming last night, he was still a happy little guy this morning - not clingy or scared or anything. And even after his first "nap" this morning he was still playful and happy. So I have zero evidence that he's being negatively affected by this - except the crying when he's supposed to be sleeping.
Ok, enough, I'm going to go try to plan a French class. 10 more minutes and I can pick him up.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Who needs a walker?
I mentioned that Thomas did a sort of mini-cruise (between two buckets) early in our vacation. Well, here's what he was up to by the last day:
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Cruisin' (well, beginning cruising)
Today Thomas made his first foray (at least that we've seen) into the world of cruising. He discovered the joys of playing with some overturned buckets and then discovered the joys of moving between them - on his feet! We were startled to see it happen, but frankly not too surprised. Mr. Curiosity has been thinking about this for a while. Now we just have to see how quickly he figures out that he can do this on other furniture.
In the meantime, never one to let a little thing like not knowing how to walk get him down, Thomas found another means of locomotion, the supported knee-walk:
I foolishly thought Thomas was stuck & stopped the camera for a few seconds, but Thomas is nothing if not persistent:
And, in non-motor news, he's recently added g's and h's to his babbling repertoire, so we're getting lots of gagas and even some attempts (we think) at "hi"!
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Wish you were here
Sorry, it's been a while since our last post (we'll play catch up later). For now, we have a few cute pics of Thomas that we wanted to share. Warning: for those of you in the Northeast (or other cold places) these might be painful to view. Anyhow, we're in the Cayman Islands staying with Mandy's aunt Sara and uncle Peter and have been introducing Thomas to water other than that which fills our bath tub.
As you can see from the first picture, his initial impression was not positive. To be fair to the little guy, a) this picture was taken the same day that we left Ottawa (which required waking him at 3:30 a.m.), b) he was standing on a beach which was probably the largest open space he had ever seen, c) he was next to more water than he knew existed, and d) it was brighter than Ottawa ever is. The good news is - as the subsequent pictures show - he gained some confidence after some "training" in the pool and is now happy to plunge into the ocean (that is, with Mom or Dad right near by).
As you can see from the first picture, his initial impression was not positive. To be fair to the little guy, a) this picture was taken the same day that we left Ottawa (which required waking him at 3:30 a.m.), b) he was standing on a beach which was probably the largest open space he had ever seen, c) he was next to more water than he knew existed, and d) it was brighter than Ottawa ever is. The good news is - as the subsequent pictures show - he gained some confidence after some "training" in the pool and is now happy to plunge into the ocean (that is, with Mom or Dad right near by).
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