The busy life of a full time employee, student, mom and wife

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Cry it out!

When your kid is sick you want to do nothing but cuddle and love them and give them anything they could possibly want or need and then some. I may go a little overboard when my kids are sick. Possibly. Maybe. Allegedly. Since last week when Noah was sick I've been getting up with him 6 million times a night, giving him breathing treatments and tylenol, cuddling him, and giving him a bottle to get him back to sleep. Well wouldn't you know it, the little guy got a tad bit accustomed.

Prior to this we had him sleeping almost perfectly. We'd have the occasional bad night but for the most part he would go down at 8pm and stay down until usually around 5am. I'd give him a bottle at 5 and put him back down where he'd stay asleep until usually around 7. Dream baby.

Since starting his breathing treatments on Tuesday Noah has improved impressively. We had a little tiny regression on Friday morning but by that evening he was back on track. His breathing has improved to the point where we're using his inhaler on an "as-needed" basis, rather than the original every four hours. He even only needed one treatment yesterday! So now that his health seems to be back on track, aside from the occasional snot rocket of a sneeze, we decided it's time to get his sleeping back on track. Waking up so much every night was starting to have a serious toll on both parents.

We come from the "cry it out" camp. I know its controversial and you could tell me 16421782 reasons why its bad for my kids, but it works for us. I did it with my oldest son and he's not serial killing yet so I think he turned out okay. In fact, he's a happy, well adjusted toddler who sleeps in his own bed, in his own room, all night every night.  So last night was our first night crying it out with Noah. He miraculously slept until 3:30am, which is good as of late! So at 3:30 I tried to get him to go back to sleep on his own. I swaddled him (ugh yes, he's 7 months old and still loves being swaddled), gave him his paci, turned on some water sounds for him and walked out. Napes. He wanted his cuddles and bottle he had become accustomed to. So I put him in his swing, maybe swinging would put him back to sleep? Napes. So I decided okay, its time to cry then. And cry he did. Then some more. And more. And a little bit more. Until 5am. I resolved at 4:45 to go make his bottle because he clearly wasn't going back to sleep and of course, he fell asleep while I was making his bottle.

So needless to say our first night of crying it out was a bit rough. I've been up since 3:30 and probably wont get to bed until 10-11 tonight. It's gunna be a long day. We made a new rule that his bottle time will be 3:30 instead of 5. If he wakes up around 3:30 he can have a bottle and we'll work our way back out to 5. But if he's up before 3:30(ish) then hes gotta re-learn to put himself back to sleep. Ugh.

Look at that face! It's nearly impossible to resist cuddles from that.

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