it's funny how actually being a parent can make you think completely differently than you did when you "learned" all about parenting before you were a parent. i read these comments on, for example, babycenter.com about various things (mostly soon-to-be or new moms advocating total attachment parenting styles) and think "ha, just wait until you are pregnant and have a one year old who refuses to fall sleep at night without staring at you for an hour. then let's see how you feel about teaching them to self-soothe."
rowan has always been nursed to sleep, and i have done everything--since she was two weeks old--to make bedtime predictable, pleasant, and secure for her: set routine, same time, make sure she's tired, nursing/snuggles, laid down before sleeping, etc etc etc ad infinitum. and still she would not fall asleep unless someone was standing over her. she doesn't cry for us at night when she wakes, at least, but bedtime has always taken too long because i have to stand there until she's asleep--which can take a LONG time--and half the time she wants to play for 30 minutes or so in the crib, which would just piss me off. so i finally gave up.
yeah. i was (and actually still am) so against any crying-it-out. it just doesn't seem right. but i am here to admit we did it... and it worked. i really, really had to gear myself up for it because i cannot stand to have rowan upset, but it was an important step for both of us, i think. it was truly less for my convenience than in preparation for the fact that i know i will not be able to spend an hour or more hovering in her bedroom when we have a newborn... and i do not want rowan to associate "the baby" with being deprived of her expected comforts. so we had to knock this out well in advance of baby's arrival, desperate measures or not. plus, she's a year old, she's big enough to know we love her and will not leave her, and her crying when i walk out is purely "come back come back because i said so" and not anything actually wrong with her. i had already tried the modified CIO where you go back in slowly increasing time intervals, and it only seemed to make things worse. bedtime could stretch into two hours of intermittent screaming... hell.
it went like this: the day i finally decided to get serious and let her cry as long as it took, she decided she didn't need me to fall asleep. she let me walk away with her wide freaking awake and she never made a peep! i was shocked. that lasted for 4 days. the day she started crying again when i walked out, i was so heartbroken i just decided at the spur of the moment that that was it. and about 10 minutes later i was in tears and questioning my parental fitness such that matt ordered me to go take a bath to drown out her wailing. it was bad, but i don't think she actually cried for all that long. the next night i went outside but could still hear her, and ended up in the bathtub again. third night, bath, i think she cried for 30 minutes. tonight, the fourth night, she let me walk away! 15 minutes later she cried and i went to tuck her back in bed because i knew she had woke herself up over something, and when i left she cried for 20 seconds. i think we're over it!
so, prematurely, i am going to say it took 3 days of real crying to "fix" her bedtime issues. and she never cried for more than about 30 minutes on any given night, which is SO much better than the 2 hours of intermittent crying she did when i tried the "gentle" CIO method. rowan is way too stubborn for that; give her her way a little and she demands the rest of it... set boundaries and she's fine. that's just who she is.
and there you have my confession. i used CIO. my heart says attachment-all-the-way, and it's a lovely ideal, but reality has a way of making it impractical, unfortunately. i think each parent really needs to evaluate their own situation, their own baby, and the needs of the rest of the family to determine what's best for them. and i definitely think baby's age makes a huge difference in the ok-ness of certain things. rowan is about to officially be "a big girl"... and a big sister too... *sniffle*
*sniffle*
they grow so fast...
rowan has always been nursed to sleep, and i have done everything--since she was two weeks old--to make bedtime predictable, pleasant, and secure for her: set routine, same time, make sure she's tired, nursing/snuggles, laid down before sleeping, etc etc etc ad infinitum. and still she would not fall asleep unless someone was standing over her. she doesn't cry for us at night when she wakes, at least, but bedtime has always taken too long because i have to stand there until she's asleep--which can take a LONG time--and half the time she wants to play for 30 minutes or so in the crib, which would just piss me off. so i finally gave up.
yeah. i was (and actually still am) so against any crying-it-out. it just doesn't seem right. but i am here to admit we did it... and it worked. i really, really had to gear myself up for it because i cannot stand to have rowan upset, but it was an important step for both of us, i think. it was truly less for my convenience than in preparation for the fact that i know i will not be able to spend an hour or more hovering in her bedroom when we have a newborn... and i do not want rowan to associate "the baby" with being deprived of her expected comforts. so we had to knock this out well in advance of baby's arrival, desperate measures or not. plus, she's a year old, she's big enough to know we love her and will not leave her, and her crying when i walk out is purely "come back come back because i said so" and not anything actually wrong with her. i had already tried the modified CIO where you go back in slowly increasing time intervals, and it only seemed to make things worse. bedtime could stretch into two hours of intermittent screaming... hell.
it went like this: the day i finally decided to get serious and let her cry as long as it took, she decided she didn't need me to fall asleep. she let me walk away with her wide freaking awake and she never made a peep! i was shocked. that lasted for 4 days. the day she started crying again when i walked out, i was so heartbroken i just decided at the spur of the moment that that was it. and about 10 minutes later i was in tears and questioning my parental fitness such that matt ordered me to go take a bath to drown out her wailing. it was bad, but i don't think she actually cried for all that long. the next night i went outside but could still hear her, and ended up in the bathtub again. third night, bath, i think she cried for 30 minutes. tonight, the fourth night, she let me walk away! 15 minutes later she cried and i went to tuck her back in bed because i knew she had woke herself up over something, and when i left she cried for 20 seconds. i think we're over it!
so, prematurely, i am going to say it took 3 days of real crying to "fix" her bedtime issues. and she never cried for more than about 30 minutes on any given night, which is SO much better than the 2 hours of intermittent crying she did when i tried the "gentle" CIO method. rowan is way too stubborn for that; give her her way a little and she demands the rest of it... set boundaries and she's fine. that's just who she is.
and there you have my confession. i used CIO. my heart says attachment-all-the-way, and it's a lovely ideal, but reality has a way of making it impractical, unfortunately. i think each parent really needs to evaluate their own situation, their own baby, and the needs of the rest of the family to determine what's best for them. and i definitely think baby's age makes a huge difference in the ok-ness of certain things. rowan is about to officially be "a big girl"... and a big sister too... *sniffle*
*sniffle*
they grow so fast...
Posts
Post a Comment