Will was a week or so shy of 16 months when we started to train him to self-soothe to sleep. I felt guilty about it then but was getting desperate for a good night’s sleep… one free of kicks, punches, and pokes. I’m fine with the family bed and have no problem with a 1-year old sharing it… but either because we’re smooshed in the Queen (note to future parents: forgo the crib, invest in a King mattress) or because my children are maniacs out to destroy me, both children go into attack mode during sleep.
Kate gets herself to sleep at school each day, so I know she is capable of drifting off without me. However, when I am around, she seems to forget this. In fact, when I am around, she makes a point to wake up every 30 minutes or so just to remind me that she needs me to fall back asleep. Even this would be okay, if the 30 minutes in between those awake moments were not filled with Bruce Lee moves directed at my tender parts.
I say all of this to relieve myself of the guilt I feel for starting Kate on sleep training. It actually went well, the getting her to sleep part. With Will, the first night involved him throwing a huge temper-tantrum, rocketing his toys out of the crib one by one and finally, when there was nothing else to throw, taking off his pants and tossing them. I remember that when he was too exhausted to fuss, he started to clap to get my attention. (We did the Supernanny “stay in the room without eye contact” method.) He still joined us in the wee hours of the night until he was almost 2 and when he did make this transition to sleeping in his bed through the night, it was on his own schedule. I figured this will be the same for Kate. We have been talking about needing to do something for awhile and decided to go for it. Paul has little patience for being disrupted in his sleep and I can’t handle it alone every night. I just really need her to sleep a few hours on her own. Maybe just for half the night? Four hours? Is that too much to expect from a 1-year old? She is a few months younger than Will was when we started him down this path, but I know this is something she can do because she does it everyday! Please Kate… just go to sleep for us, on your own! I am so sorry, but I can’t fight with you every night.
So, tonight, I nursed her, cuddled her, sang to her… and put her in her crib. She started out happy, bounced up and pointed towards our bedroom, signaling that she expected to go back. After a few minutes of quiet fussing, she let us know she wasn’t happy. But it didn’t last particularly long (20 minutes?) and finally, Kate went to sleep. It was hard for me to do — mostly because I feel it was completely wrong. Rational parenting makes sense to me. What other species allow their off-spring to cry themselves to sleep? What would it mean for children to decide when they are ready to leave their parents bed? If we stripped away the need to fit our children into convenient places in our lives and removed all the cultural lessons that tell us to use cribs… if we did all of that, would we ever even consider the thought of not sleeping with our babies? I feel sorry, sad, and frustrated to be giving in to these conveniences.
As I write this, Kate is crying. She was asleep for a little over an hour before waking. Paul is trying to help her but she is pretty miserable. If I get her, she’ll be up again in an hour and then again in another half hour to hour for the rest of the night. She’ll kick herself awake, be cranky, pull on me to nurse, nurse, then squirm and kick and be miserable until I fight her to be still enough to sleep… then wake up again in 30 minutes. This has been my life for over a month and I need help changing it. I’m sorry Kate. I have to believe that, in this moment, I am not teaching things that will cause you to loose trust in the world, in me, or in yourself.
Shokufeh | 10-Jul-07 at 7:42 am | Permalink
Good luck. I feel your pain. We, until very recently, were regularly sharing a bed with MrMan. A full-sized bed! But, in the past month, he suddenly shifted to sleeping in his own bed through the night. Bizarre. But welcomed.
She’s going to be okay.
And you’re going to be better rested. Eventually.
Amy Lee | 10-Jul-07 at 8:27 am | Permalink
I agonized for months over a similar situation with Brayden. Fortunately, he is a VERY sound sleeper, and I finally tuned out everything society said about co-sleeping. In our case, it maximized the quantity of sleep for everyone in our family, while making up for the time I lost nursing him and being close to him during the work days. He’s a confident, happy, healthy, well-adjusted toddler now, so I wouldn’t take back a minute of it or do ANYTHING differently. When he wasn’t in our bed, he was in a Pack-n-Play in our room. However, when the house went on the market two weeks ago, we put away the Pack-n-Play and tried his crib “cold turkey.” It was absolutely miraculous and, much to my suprise, turned out to be a complete non-event (past attempts had failed miserably). He does still get up to nurse once or twice a night. I don’t know why the crib worked this time around – was it because I had finally put all the books away (do you want my copy of “The No Cry Sleep Solution”?)? I wish I had some good advice for you, but all I can say is hang in there – it will get better, and it can get better without tears from either of you.
Cold Spaghetti | 11-Jul-07 at 9:26 pm | Permalink
The whole ‘night of barfing’ episode has put us back a bit, but we’re trying! Thanks for the support!!!!