Cry it Again

Emmalee and I have had our fair share of sleep troubles.  She started out as an excellent sleeper, but at about six months that changed pretty drastically.  I somehow managed to emerge victoriously from that long, sleep-deprived period by attempting to have Emma “cry it out” just before she turned nine months.  It was not a decision I made lightly, and I was not in any way happy to listen to my baby scream.  But it ended up being a good decision, because Emma began to sleep through the night again almost immediately. 

After six weeks or so of this method, Emma was still sobbing for about twenty minutes every night.  I gave in and began to rock her to sleep again.  This led to a brief period of some night waking on some nights, but she has been sleeping soundly for about 11 ½ hours a night for some time now.  As I chronicled in a previous blog, Victory is Mine, I’ve been feeling pretty happy about the outcome of our sleep battle.

Lately, though, it has begun to weigh on me that I am still rocking Emma to sleep each night.  I know that at some point she needs to learn to fall asleep on her own in addition to sleeping through the night.  I wouldn’t be overly concerned about it except that rocking her to sleep is getting harder.  It seems like it is taking longer and longer before I can lay her down without her waking up and crying.  Some nights it takes 45 minutes to an hour and I end up just making her cry until she falls asleep anyway.  The inconsistency of this is unfair to her though, and I’ve been getting frustrated.  Sunday night I reached my breaking point and after rocking her for 45 minutes I made the decision to give cry it out another go. 

The first night was harder than I remembered it being.  Maybe because Emma is older now and has had more time to perfect her temper tantrums, but oh, did she ever protest.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard such angry wailing.  It literally gave me chills to listen to.  How I stood my ground I will never know.  That night she cried for about 30 minutes, with me going in every ten minutes to lay her back down and shush her a bit (not that this had any effect whatsoever).  The second night she cried for 16 minutes, and she wasn’t nearly as intense about it.  This made me optimistic that maybe this time she would get the message and accept the situation quicker.  I should have known better.

Last night Emmalee cried for 50 minutes.  I continued to go in every ten minutes, even though this practice is probably more for me than for her.  I don’t want her to feel abandoned.  But truthfully, I don’t think she does.  I believe wholeheartedly that Emma is a content and happy child who feels safe and loved.  I don’t think she is crying because she is scared or feels neglected.  I think she cries because she is angry that I am not doing what she wants me to do.  But it is still heartbreaking to listen to her, especially considering I have to sit and listen to her all alone.  I spend a lot of time standing at the end of the hallway with my forehead pressed against the wall, silently pleading with her to just go to sleep already.  Last night was extremely hard for me and I went to bed feeling thoroughly depressed about the whole situation.

Tonight was night four of our second cry it out attempt, and thankfully it was a little better.  Emma only cried continuously for six minutes, and then it was on and off crying for about six more before she was finally quiet.  So 12 minutes total, which is quite a bit better than 50.  Perhaps the most stubborn child ever is getting the message after all.  Or, quite possibly, it was just a fluke because she went to bed a little later than usual and was so tired that she had less fight in her. 

I don’t know if cry it out is the right thing to do, I really don’t.  But I don’t know what else to do.  I can’t rock her to sleep forever.  Sure, there are “gentler” methods out there, and yes, I have read about them.  I just don’t think they would work for Emmalee.  I hate listening to her cry.  It is stressful for both of us.  I can only hope that we will gain something positive from the experience.  Tonight was only night four, and I am not so naïve as to think that it is all downhill from here.  After all, this is Emmalee we are talking about.  I wanted her, and she seems to want to make sure I get all that I can out of the experience.  I love that child so much it is ridiculous, and all I really want is to be a good mom to her and to do right by her.  But, sometimes, knowing what is right is a lot harder than it sounds. 

Victory is Mine... for now

Being pregnant was a long and uncomfortable process.  Bringing home a newborn was scary and overwhelming.  Learning how to care for that newborn and adjusting to a newborn schedule was exhausting.  But almost right away Emmalee fell into a pattern of sleeping 2-3 hours at a time.  For someone without children, that might not sound so great.  But I’ve been in a place where 2-3 hours of uninterrupted sleep would sound like heaven. 

By two months old Emmalee was sleeping from 9 pm to 7 am pretty consistently.  At the time I didn’t know any better, so I took the sleep I was suddenly getting for granted.  When she stopped sleeping through the night at around six months old, I felt completely unprepared to handle the situation.  As I chronicled in a previous blog, “Compromise,” what followed were months of sleep deprivation and fatigue that left me feeling lost, desperate, and more like a zombie than a mom.  There is something about sleeping for twenty to thirty minutes at a time, being awake for 60-90 minutes or more between each interval, and being lucky if those brief sleep periods add up to 3-4 hours total for weeks on end that changes you in a fundamental way.  This may sound dramatic, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who’ve been through far worse, but for me this was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever lived through.  I don’t remember ever being more miserable or hopeless.

When I wrote my last blog on this topic, I was at a place where I thought I’d successfully “won” the sleep battle.  At that point I was still rocking Emma to sleep and was up with her at least once most nights, sometimes for an hour or more, and I truly thought that was as good as it was going to get.  I’d resigned myself to this less interrupted version of sleep and decided that I could live with it.  It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than what I’d been faced with previously.  Cry it out sleep training methods played a role in getting me through the worst of this sleep crisis, and I do not regret using them even though the outcome was not exactly what I would have hoped for.  If I ever meet Jodi Mindell, the author of Sleeping Through the Night, I am still likely to fall before her and worship at her feet.  I would recommend her book to anyone.  She helped me see the light at the end of the bleakest tunnel I’ve ever been through.

The point of this blog is to say that while I once saw the light at the end of the tunnel, I now feel as if I have emerged from that tunnel victoriously.  For a little more than a month now, Emmalee has slept through the night uninterrupted.  Ok, yes, I still rock her to sleep.  So maybe I’ve still got one foot stuck in the shadows.  But once I lay her down I’m done.  No more than an occasional whimper or grunt for the next eleven hours.  I’ve been getting so much sleep that I feel like an actual human being again, with thoughts and everything.  Emma goes to bed and I not only have down time but I have the energy to enjoy it.  It took almost a year, but for the first time I feel like this whole being a mom thing is something I might be able to handle after all.  And though “mother” is the most important metaphorical hat I’ll ever wear, I no longer feel like an empty shell walking around in a costume that doesn’t fit.  I feel like me again.  Getting back that sense of self allows me to be all the things I need to be, mother, teacher, wife, daughter, sister, friend, with much more confidence and strength.  I say all this with a little reservation, hoping fervently that I’m not speaking too soon.  Part of me fears that by posting this I am dooming myself to an awful night with Emmalee.  I’m pretty sure she has a sixth sense for these things and will cry all night just to spite me. 

No, I’m kidding.  Sort of. 

I realize I cannot rock Emmalee to sleep forever.  It might get kind of awkward by the time she’s eleven.  This is still an obstacle to overcome, the goal being that someday I will be able to lie Emma down in her crib awake and she will fall asleep on her own and will still sleep through the night.  I am considering giving “cry it out” another try.  Perhaps now that she is older it will work more effectively.  But that is a subject for another time and blog.  For now I will try to be content with the success Emmalee and I have achieved, and I will try not to think too much about all the obstacles that still lie before me.  Pleasant dreams.  (Yes, dreams.  I sleep long enough to have those again, too!)

Compromise

At two months old Emmalee began sleeping through the night.  And I don’t mean sleeping through the night according to the books which state that a 5-6 hour stretch is normal.  I mean sleeping from 9 pm to 7 am every night.  I would rock her to sleep (and here is where the veteran moms begin shaking their heads, I know), lay her down, and not hear from her again until morning.  It was bliss.

But then Emmalee hit 6 months old and things began to change.  I started having to rock her back to sleep in the middle of the night.  That in itself probably doesn’t sound so bad, but it would sometimes take up to two hours before I would be able to lay her down and leave the room without her screaming the second her head hit the sheets as if I were laying her on hot coals instead of the expensive Sealy mattress with the picture of the peacefully dreaming baby on it.  And from here it escalated until she literally woke up every hour like clockwork and I was lucky to doze for 20-30 minutes at a time before she’d wake up screaming again.  There were times when I would lay her down and tiptoe down the hall, in my head desperately chanting “please stay asleep, please stay asleep, please stay asleep,” but just as I reached the corner she’d wail, and in turn I would crumble to the floor with my head in my hands and wail right back.  I began to think of the glider in Emma’s room where I spent countless hours each night as my “torture chair.”  As the sky darkened each evening I would grow more and more anxious, dreading the impending torment my not-so-precious-anymore baby would cause me.  Clearly, this was not working.

Back when Emma was a wonderful sleeper I was able to hold on to the belief that “cry it out” sleep methods, in which a baby is left alone in her crib to cry herself to sleep, were sinister and something I would never in a million years consider.  It is amazing how a few weeks without sleep can make you rethink every belief you once held dear.  So I bought a couple of books on the subject and poured over them in my sleep deprived haze, and then in a state of pure desperation Emma and I began to cry it out.  According to the books, the first night should be the worst but by night 3 I should see a dramatic reduction in the amount of time spent crying.  The goal, after all, is not to have your baby cry but to teach your baby to fall asleep without you.  After a week it was clear that the experts who wrote the books have never met Emmalee.  Emmalee didn’t just cry… she screamed as if she were being beaten.  And she did this consistently, night after night, for at least 20 minutes.  The bright side was that once she finally fell asleep she slept, meaning I slept.  The not so bright side was that every night I had to listen to her scream and worry about the possibility that I might be causing long term psychological damage to my precious baby (precious again, because like I said, I was getting some sleep). 

After six weeks of this, I just couldn’t take it anymore.  Clearly, this wasn’t working either.  So one night I decided to rock Emma until she was good and drowsy and just starting to doze.  I did this, and when I laid her in her crib amazingly she opened her eyes, turned onto her side, and fell right back to sleep… and slept the entire night.  So I am back to rocking her to sleep again.  More often than not she wakes up in the night at least once.  Sometimes she falls asleep again on her own after only a few minutes of crying and fussing, and sometimes I have to go rock her.  When I do have to rock her I tell myself that she won’t be little forever and someday I’ll miss this time with her.  Of course, I’m able to think this way because I never have to rock her back to sleep more than once anymore.  So “cry it out” did not work for us in the traditional sense, but it did help us to reach a sort of agreement.  I like to think that Emma has decided that as long as I don’t make her cry alone in her crib then she will not insist I rock her the entire night while she sleeps.  And while neither of us finds the situation to be completely ideal, we can live with it.  Emma’s first lesson in compromise.