Lately I have lost a lot of interest in posting here... mostly because it seems to be a daily, repetitious whinefest, which is not really the purpose I intend to serve. Woe is me, I'm tired, blah blah blah.Last night was no exception. Mallory was up 4 times before 1 a.m. I put her back to bed at 1:20 a.m. and she was up ten minutes later at 1:30 a.m. - and I didn't go get her. To be honest, it wasn't a conscious decision; it was more a matter of Just give me a few minutes to figure out which way is up before I try to get out of bed... and those few minutes turned into a few more... and then it was kind of like, we've come this far... let's see it through. In all, she cried for 50 minutes. So, um, yeah - a lot longer than I thought. Though only about 5 of it was hard crying, the rest was (grumble grumble grumble) - (pause) - I could literally see the wheels turning in her mind (Is she coming yet? No? Grumble grumble grumble...) Well, intentional or not, it got her through to her 5:30 a.m. feeding with no more wakings.
The question now is, do I repeat it tonight? Do I refuse to go to her at all? What if she's up ten times, do I go to her for any of them or refuse altogether? (She was up once already, squawked for 20 seconds, then settled down.) Most importantly, what sort of psychological damage am I causing? With Liam, we went through the agony of letting him cry to sleep at night a few times, but it was always when we first put him down - he didn't need settling multiple times per night. I dug out Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and it tells me to make Mallory suck it up and not worry about it. This has been going on for a long time - I do feel like the time has come to do something about it, and tonight Liam is sleeping over at Gramma and Grampa's and Chad is out of town, so if Mal screams bloody murder, she won't be disrupting the whole house. It's just that, well, I seem to have gone soft. I know we did it with Liam when he was a lot younger than this, but that doesn't stop my heart from breaking. I'm heading off to bed now and still undecided on just how far I will let it go before I cave.
Oh yeah, and remember this guy? He's still around. Still doing well. He just doesn't get up ten times each night... which is why he doesn't get much airtime these days.
1 comments:
Somehow our thoughts change with our second or we convince ourselves that they are different personalities & that is the difference. Or, it is that we only want one child up in the night & not two. After the fact- for me- I am not completely sure which is the right answer for our household- but I do know that Jason didn't sleep through the night until 8.5 months vs. Sydney's 3 months. Did he finally figure it our or did I??? I can't even remember anymore. All I remember is how thankful I was to sleep for at least 7 hours straight!!!
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