Last night we let Asher cry through the night for the first time. Talk about torture for parents! We'd been debating over whether or not we should let him cry himself to sleep for a few days. The last few weeks I have been becoming more and more exhausted having to get up twice a night with Asher, at 1Am and 4Am. Lots of times he really isn't very hungry and only eats for a few minuets and then falls back asleep! Even though Jon is GREAT and takes him as much as he can-- it has really been wearing on me. Sometimes I just have to have Jon stick Asher in bed with me because I am too tired to go get him-- but then NEITHER of us sleeps very well when we sleep together-- I wake him up and he wakes me up! I keep hoping every time he wakes me up that it will magically be 6 AM, but it hasn't happened yet.
Yet, it seems like I keep hearing and reading contradicting things about how to get babies to sleep at night. Somethings I have read say that babies will just "naturally" start sleeping through the night by themselves, others say that you have to let them cry for awhile, and others say that you are a horrible and unfeeling parent who will traumatize your child for life if you let them cry too long. I have been really confused about what to do!Then I was talking with my next door neighbor, who has five young kids and whose mothering advice I value highly, and she said that with her first she didn't let her first baby cry though the night and that he didn't sleep all the way through the night till he was 2 years old! AGGG! I think that I would be batty by that time.
Yet I have to admit that letting him cry for so long, about 40 min, was really hard on me. Jon and I just lay awake listening to him. We kept repeating, "we love you Asher, we love you..." and we even said a little prayer for him. When he finally did fall asleep he slept REALLY good and didn't wake up till 6 AM, and he seems alot more refreshed and happier this morning than usual. So I don't know! I guess parenting is going to be full of lots of hard questions like these! We are going to try again tonight-- I've heard that it usually just takes a few nights of crying before they start sleeping straight through-- I hope not too much longer.
6 years ago
3 comments:
Isn't it hard sometimes? It's so true, there are so many contradicting opinions out there on sleep methods and such. For awhile now, we have let James cry for up to about 20 minutes, and he has done so great and usually always falls asleep sooner than that, and then sleeps really well. Then I got reading some other opinions on how it's "traumatizing" and all this stuff, so I started going to him more often, and I think it really messed up his sleep schedule - it turns out that, at least for him, it works better to just let him cry a little bit. I'll be anxious to know how it works out for you guys! It was fun to see you guys the other day - what a cute little guy you've got!
i know how you feel. i am dealing with similar issues right now with isabelle. it's harder because she and isaiah are sharing a room now, and currently we put isabelle to sleep after isaiah goes to bed around 8:30 pm. on a good night she goes to bed around 9 or 9:30pm. then she wakes up again at 2am, not eating much either, and from that point on she sleeps with chad and i until morning around 6pm when i nurse her again, and then she'll sleep again until about 9 or 10am.
i am getting very tired of this routine, as you can imagine. she is already 8 months old. we had similar issues with isaiah and i read several articles and books on the issues. the one method (jodi mindell) i applied to isaiah was to let him cry himself to sleep at bedtime following a bed time routine that included a bath, getting dressed and reading a bedtime story such as good night moon and then telling everybody good night. this method suggests that once the baby knows how to fall asleep at bed time he will start learning how to soothe himself back to sleep when he wakes up in the middle of the night, which all babies do several times a night, even though it may not appear that way, and at nap time. after a while the night time wakings and naps will become easier for the baby to handle on his own.
i must say this method worked for us. isaiah was about 7 or 8 months old when he started sleeping all the way through the night. in the beginning i would still go to him when he woke up in the middle of the night. i would not feed him, but only rock him back to sleep. at nap time i rocked him to sleep as well. it seems to me that it really only took maybe up to a week before he started going to bed and sleeping through the night by himself without crying anymore at all.
so, i am anxious to start doing this with isabelle, only i need to figure out how, since they share a room. i think i am going to put isaiah in a seperate room (guest room) until she learns to sleep through the night.
i hope asher is sleeping through the night by now. let me know. also, i find i can endure the crying more when i keep myself busy doing laundry or the dishes, and turning the monitor down so i can't hear the crying. before i know it, they stopped crying!
good luck with it all!
Just a suggestion...I welcome your thoughts ") When you were little, we learned about a method called 3-3-5. The technique is to start with a bedtime routine, done in the same order each night; Then when it was time for lights out,we would put you down in the crib, tell you good night and give a last little game...like "10 kisses". If you got out of bed, (or for your brother and sisters that came later)...we gave you three minutes to wander, but we would not give any attention to you being out of bed...At the end of three minutes we would carry you back to bed and shut the door. If you cried, we came to the door, peeked in and said "time for night-night", immediately put you back in bed, gave you one more brief pat, closed the door...bascially, we would give you three minutes to cry, check on you briefly and say night-night, then three more minutes, check on you and say night night and then give you five minutes to cry it out before checking on you again and saying night-night. If you were still up or crying or running around, we started the whole 3-3-5 cycle over again...In 10 years of raising infants and toddlers, not one of you ever made it past the 20 minute mark without falling quietly to sleep on your own in your bed or your crib ")
Love,
Mommy
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