Fits and Fits

Would you believe that this little one has been giving us fits and fits? No? It's true.

She went from sleeping nine hours at night, to waking up three or four times! She has never been a great napper. She goes down easily for naps, but wakes up after her first sleep cycle about 95% of the time. It's like clockwork, actually. I can look at the clock and the video monitor after she has been down about 45 minutes and she will just be waking up. At first I could reinsert her pacifier and she would sometimes go back to sleep. Then, I had to rock her or put her in the swing. Now, she will only go back to sleep if I rock her for 20+ minutes and don't talk or do anything that might disturb her. No one else can talk or do anything either :). Then, no matter how long she has been asleep in my arms, she will wake up within five minutes of me putting her back in her crib. Now, someone might ask - what if she was just done napping after 45 minutes? Well, I just knew that she wasn't. She would wake up really crabby and not her happy self and she wouldn't eat when I tried to nurse her. She was just plain tired but couldn't put herself back to sleep.

She was getting majorly overtired and so was I. I think the habit of getting picked up and comforted after every sleep cycle was creating a bad habit for the rest of her sleep during the night. She was losing the ability to sooth herself throughout the night. Just to make sure, I took her to the doctor two days ago to check her ears and make sure that she wasn't coming down with something. She got a clean bill of health except that we decided to restart her Zantac just in case she was still having a little reflux.

After the doctor's appointment, my path was clear. It was time to let her cry it out :(. The doctor said she was old enough. For me, a sleep-deprived child is a sadder sight than a crying child. She was becoming a textbook example case from my "Healthy Sleep Habits" book. Only sleeping in my arms, very hard to get to sleep (because she was so overtired and agitated), not her usual happy self. Before all this, I could just wrap her up and she would start to fall asleep. Now, she was so wound up, that it took 10-20 minutes or more of rocking to get her down. I knew she had the ability for good sleep since she had been doing it. So, we buckled down and have been doing it the past two nights and yesterday during the day. I think this is definitely the right decision. She is already sleeping better and is SO much happier!

The crying is sad, but it is getting shorter. Last night, she woke up once to eat, and then didn't wake up at all. Yesterday, I made her cry through her naps. It was sad, but she fell back asleep and slept an additional 60-90 minutes. For me, it's better because I can't just sit and rock her for hours on end, even if I wanted to. It's better for Willa because she's not forced to play quietly by herself for hours while I rock June. It's also better because after a good nap, we actually have a few minutes where we might go somewhere before June needs to go down for a nap again. When she was waking up so early, she never was quite awake and happy, and never up long enough to go somewhere like the store or a friend's house. It's just better all around. I really hoped I'd never have to let her cry it out, and I especially didn't want to do it before six months, but she needed it. She needed more sleep and she was getting less and less. I still listen to her at night and get up once or twice to feed her because she is still little. But, when she was waking up so frequently, she wasn't even hungry most of the time. So, if it has only been an hour or two since she last ate, I know she's not hungry and I let her cry. One of my friends made the comment once that she was trying to put all the burden of sleep training on her baby, but SHE was the adult. She needed to take some responsibility and help the baby learn too. I like that. Sometimes crying is hard, but we also are the parents. For me, that means making sure that June gets the good sleep she needs. We're only two days into this, so I'm not quite ready to call it a huge success yet, but so far things are going well.

Fight on! So sad that this onesie was too small by the time I finally put it on June. The half body shot is because it is too small to snap on the bottom.