And now it's 2012....as one can imagine - the time from November to December is so busy and flies by. On top of that, I had all kinds of lovely morning sickness to deal with! Luckily, that has mostly subsided by now. Our little family is getting a little bit Fuller with another baby! Anyway - it's time for an update. One of amazement!
One of our biggest struggles with you, my dear Maya-bear, has been sleep. The specifics of the struggles have changed over the last 2 years (yup, in 2 months, you'll be 2!!!). You're a fantastic child and I have often felt like we get some sort of child swap every time we hit sleep time.
1 week ago, I was pulling my hair out about sleep. Nap and bedtime were taking forever! I kept falling asleep trying to get you to sleep at night which messed with all sorts of things and you just couldn't seem to wind down. I was even talking about heading to the doctor to make sure we weren't missing something with allergies or your ears or something.
Then, I was chatting with another mama who said she just started leaving the room for a little bit of time at bedtime and eventually made it longer and her kiddo fell asleep on her own. I'd read this strategy before and had tried it at some point. It didn't work then. But as I thought about it, I remembered that you have been fine lately when I need to go downstairs to get your milk cup or something. So I decided to give it another go at nap time last Thursday.
IT WORKED!!
Then I tried bedtime - that didn't go so well. You definitely tried, but we just couldn't pull it off. I didn't give up though, I tried nap again on Friday, and it worked again! We tried again for bedtime - and again, it didn't work. Nap on Saturday was great again so I tried to think of what was different. For nap, our routine always starts right about the time I want you to go to sleep (often because I lose track of time). However with bedtime, we often start early (7) with the hopes that you'll go to sleep earlier, but it almost always takes you until 8, if not later to get to sleep. So I decided to try started our routine a bit later.
IT WORKED!!
Nap and bedtime today worked as well (starting bedtime pretty much right at 8, which is later than we will normally be doing I hope).
I am SO EXCITED! Getting you to sleep had been taking at least 1 1/2 hours out of my day - which wasn't all bad, in some ways I miss it a little. It was a lot of time with you, and that's never bad. But I'd much rather use that energy not trying to force you into something.
We still have some middle of the night sleep habits to tackle at some point, but right now I'm going to relax and enjoy what we've got going on because we're both getting more sleep and now you put yourself to sleep! (I've been crashing in her crazy queen mattress on the floor lately. It normally happens during your first wake up after I've gone to sleep).
I'm so proud to have listened to my instincts and your needs through this whole sleep thing. It has not been easy in any way, but I knew it was the right thing. I had a lot of people tell me that eventually we would let you cry it out, it just depended on how long it took for us to get there. I was starting to think that once your teeth were all in, maybe I would consider trying it again, but I'm so glad we never got to that point.
I really want to encourage other mamas now! You can have a baby that hates sleep and still get to this point without doing cry it out! It is hard, and it takes a long time. It takes listening hard to what your baby is trying to tell you and trying all kinds of tricks. It also takes remembering to try tricks you've already done at later points in the baby's life. It also takes talking to other moms to get ideas. And that means you'll get at least one person telling you to just "let them cry." But stick to your gut. Do it if it works for you (although read up about the potential health risks too) and don't even entertain the thought if it doesn't work for you. Every baby is so different and there is no way that there is one right answer to the sleep issue.
