There are dozens of good things about having Little E in our lives, and it's nice to know that I wouldn't swap any of it for a night of uninterrupted sleep. But goodness the bad stuff feels hard lately! I sat in E's semi-lit room at 3:45 this morning, after she had been up at 12:40, 1:40 and 3:00, reading Baby Love's chapter on "teaching your baby to sleep" aka controlled crying, not something I thought I would ever contemplate. Any thoughts, anyone? I think we have to at least lose the dummy and that may amount to controlled crying in itself.
2 comments:
Amongst my friends, the consensus seems to be that the dummy is defeating its own purpose when you have to get up repeatedly to re-insert it! Some kids don't mind losing it, others do.
Lots of pro- and anti-controlled crying out there. If you are looking for a case against it, try Pinky McKay. There are also variants- eg no more dummy but sit and pat to sleep (and hope you don't get a patting addict) or gradual variants- remove the dummy and pat, then reduce the patting...
Definitely controlled crying at various points got both my boys sleeping better; in J's case (who was altogether a more relaxed baby) he followed what seems like a "typical" pattern (amongst kids I know)- lots of long wakes on the first night, fewer shorter wakes on the second night, and fixed or just about on the third night. But... with colds and whatnot disrupting sleep we've had to do it several times. Realising that sleep improvements are not completely unidirectional is something that I took a while to achieve.
Lots of people I know (and me, for M) have found "sleep school" is a supportive environment for teaching to sleep, and not always through controlled crying. There are also people who come to your house, if it's an avenue you want to pursue...
Oh, and a lot of people advocate sending the dad in to do the controlled crying settling as the baby knows there is no option for a feed!! ;-)
Hope the sleep improves one way or another soon! As you saw from my FB thing, you're not alone :)
Thanks - on Tuesday night we took away the dummy which meant a bit of yelling at bedtime but not too bad considering. I also decided to scrap the 10pm dreamfeed in favour of an earlier bedtime, as the repeated wake-ups tend to start around 1.30, so as much sleep as possible before then seemed sensible. We also turned the radio to static and left it on. For whatever reason, she slept from 8:30pm to 3:30am without interruption. I fed her at 3:30 and she slept again until almost 6:30. Last night she woke up at 12:30 at which point I fed her as she hadn't had anything since 7:00pm, but she woke again at 3:30 with an extended bout of crying. Back to sleep from 4:30 to 6:30, more food at 6:30, back to sleep until 8:15. So last night wasn't great, but I think on the whole confiscating the dummy will be a good thing.
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