Womb to Bloom - Maternity & Beyond

How about two tranquilizers and a shot of vodka? I never understood why people couldn’t just put their children to sleep and allow them to cry it out. I was one of THOSE people pre-baby that admonished those whose children did any of the following: slept in their beds, took a pacifier, or would only fall asleep if held.

That all changed the first week of my baby’s life when she seemed inconsolable. I broke all the rules then; she slept on my husband and in our bed with a pacifier in her mouth. I became of the mind: Whatever works for you.

Fast forward six months and we’ve succeeded at teaching her to fall asleep on her own and maintained our sanity. But it wasn’t without its tortures. Hearing your baby cry at ear piercing decibels can just unravel a soul and make you feel meaner than a torturer.

There are a few tricks I learned to keep my sanity, though At about two months I let her dictate her bedtime, so that I knew when I put her down that she was actually tired. It started out at 9 p.m. and then it rapidly got earlier and earlier each week until she chose her bedtime between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Every night we perform the same routine. My husband feeds her 6-8 ounces, reads her two books and rocks her to that point where she is on the verge of sleep, but still awake. He then puts her in her crib. She often moans for a while and sometimes fusses and cries a bit.

To keep my sanity, I go to the farthest reaches of the house and perform a chore that will take me about the amount of time it should take her to fall asleep. It keeps me busy and distracted. I find by the end of that activity she’s almost always asleep and I’m relaxed.

When she got to about four months and could sleep for eight hours without a feeding, we let her cry and fuss if she awoke in the middle of the night. We’d pop her pacifier back in and stroke her head and then leave the room.

Then I turned off the baby monitor. I found that it just grated on me to hear her moaning. If she’s crying at a shrieking level, then I don’t need a baby monitor to hear it.  For goodness sakes, my neighbor Irma can hear it. Within a few nights, she slept eight hours in a stretch, and hasn’t changed that sleep pattern since.

The more trying episodes are during naptime, when she seems to resist sleep. I perform the same night-time routine and then leave, sometimes I even go outside and water my plants, so that I can’t hear it. I bring a watch with me and go in after 10 minutes to check on her.

If she’s still crying, then I soothe her in her crib and then sit in the rocking chair across from her, so that she can see me for a few minutes. Most of the time, she puts herself to sleep after a bit of fussing. If all else fails, then, yes, a drink does help.