What you signed up for

God Bless Dr. Sears.  I’ve been asking around the other folks I know whose babies were born in July and I’m hearing similar things.  Previously good sleeping babies are now waking up during the night.  After consulting folks whose advice we won’t use (e.g., let the baby cry for an hour or so), we went to AskDrSears.com.   

It was like a warm hug for the weary and the bleary eyed.  He welcomes sleep deprived parents with an “I understand” and a “you’re going to get through this.”  Although he does throw in a little tough love for the parents with an attitude of “this is what you signed up for in the first year.” However, and this is the part that makes me adore him, his mantra is “if you resent it, stop it!”  And "Never persist in a failing experiment."  If it’s not working, don’t do it anymore; there are always other alternatives that will work. (Although, he’s not a fan at all of Ferberizing)

Dave and I both had a sigh of relief from this web site, especially the section on sleep problems.  Is it his tone as a wise uncle?  Is it his philosophy that parenting should feel “right” and if it doesn’t you need to change what you’re doing?  Is it his positive tone that, yes things are tough now, but they are going to get better?  Is it his belief that parents should take care of the emotional needs of their children, but they are not to be doormats?  Again, resentment travels through the parents into the children.  There are no awards for parenting.  You have to match what you can give to what your child needs.  That’s it, that’s all, and there you go. 

So last night, we worked on the hypothesis that the frequent waking was from teething pain.  We woke the monkey up before we went to bed, topped off the tank, and gave him a little Tylenol.  12:30 he woke up (which indicated that it wasn’t teething pain b/c the Tylenol should have worked).  Dave went in for the first line of comforting.  It wasn’t working.  I showed up with a boob, nursed him and got him to go back to sleep with very little protest in the crib.  He slept through until 5 am, which is not too unlike what time he would normally wake up if he went to sleep at 7, which he did.  It’s the crib that made the difference.  He wasn’t whacking on me the whole night to pacify him. 

Tonight, we’ll try it again and I’ll really work on “filling up the tank” today so that he can have enough calories to make it through the night.  It could be a growth spurt.  He’s up 2 lbs from his 4 month visit and his 3-6 month clothes are straining on him.  We’ll see what happens tonight.

We haven’t tried all the tricks Sears suggests, so if gets worse or continues like this, we’ll try the next option.

9:31:11 AM