So. I’ve been tense lately, and here’s part of the reason why.
Things are difficult over here. Liam’s been doing the waking up in the middle of the night thing, and the resisting naps thing. Sometimes he naps a full nap with no problem. Other times he doesn’t; the nap doesn’t happen at all, or he wakes up after the first twenty-minute cycle. Every now and again he sleeps through the night, a full twelve hours, and we rejoice; then he’s back to the waking up for an hour to an hour and a half in the middle of the night. He’s having what professionals call disturbed sleep, and we’ve been trying trying trying to teach him to self-soothe so that if he wakes up from bed or nap he doesn’t spring all the way awake and go ballistic for someone to be there with him. It’s not his teeth. We’ve determined this. He just likes company.
This morning I’d had enough, and I started to play hardball. Nap time? Well, after your regular nursing session, you go into the crib and you stay there for the duration of what should be your nap. Whether you sleep or not is up to you. I can’t hold you while you lightly doze for an hour or more, trying over and over to slip you into your crib without you figuring out what’s going on and waking up to cry. You weigh too much, and you need to be able to fall asleep on your own as the rest of the world does. You’re eleven months old, kid, and you have to acquire this skill.
He’s now passed out after a bottle, because he was so exhausted and so worked up that I knew he wouldn’t sit for solid food. He spent the time he should have been taking his morning nap standing and screaming in his crib, because I couldn’t take him screaming in my arms any more; he was resisting the soothing as much as he was resisting the sleep.
It’s frustrating for everyone. It’s reached a point where nothing works: if we let him fall asleep in our arms, he wakes up crying; if we leave him to fall asleep on his own, he cries. We’ve tried various methods of soothing at intervals, adjusting bed/nap times, scheduled nap times, the responding-to-cues nap times, the works. If all it’s going to take is a week of this, then we’ll do it. No one’s going to be happy, but it will happen. And once he can fall asleep on his own, then he won’t be so exhausted that he can’t sleep.
It’s so very upsetting that to do the right thing — namely, to teach someone how to fall asleep on their own (of course with aids such as music, loveys, etc) — it has to hurt all three people involved so much.
Please note: I’m venting, not asking for advice. In fact, I’m going to turn comments off because I don’t want to get into arguments about parenting techniques. I’m writing out some of my stress in my journal, and that’s that. If I’ve been short with you lately, chalk it up to the lack of unbroken sleep and the fraying of nerves.