Fucking Ferber

Sleeping at 6 months

I wrote two sob-fest posts about sleep training Lane using Ferber last night, in a sleep-deprived and slightly drunken state, about how we shouldn't judge anyone (ahem, me) for "giving in" because we "just don't understand" that some babies don't take to things easily.  I wrote them more for myself than for anyone else, to convince myself after an hour of tears that I'm not awful.

Sleeping at 7 months

Colt and I, we are fighters when there is something worth fighting for, usually of the art variety, sometimes politics.  Knowing this, I still found myself at 3am pleading with our offspring, "Lane please surrender.  Just surrender.  You're so tired, give in to sleep baby."

When it hit me - how long did it take me to surrender to this?

A year.

A year of saying I could do this differently, when in my heart from 8 months on I knew that Lane needed stricter guidelines.  I still fought it.  I tried a soothing bedtime routine, foods that would induce sleep, singing songs, nursing.  I tried co-sleeping until my thighs were bruised from middle-of-the-night kicking sprees and my head was welted from baby head banging and I tried a mantra of "this is just a phase, this is just a phase", and black-out curtains and a new sound machine and absorbent over-night diapers.

NOT sleeping at 8+ months

 Was I going to surrender?  Hell no.  I was going to fight for the most humane natural sweet method to gain a better sleeping toddler possible, and I was going to do it with or without Colt's help.

I didn't think about him.  Colt.  I didn't think about the fact that his choice to be unmedicated with bipolar disorder means controlling certain aspects of his life to a T so he can focus on  keeping it together.  I didn't think about how sleep deprivation eats away at his mental stability.

A few nights ago when he got the "worst headache of his life" at 2am and couldn't relax and was throwing up into the early hours repeating, "I need to sleep, I just need to sleep" I realized we can't keep going on like this.  We have to help Lane sleep better for Lane, but also for us.

To come to this conclusion, I had to exhaust every.other.option. and if I could have gotten raw with my emotions, it probably would have sounded a lot like Lane crying last night as he exhausted all of his options- until finally we both found the niche, the groove, the answer we needed to move to the next level.  To surrender.

Listening to him last night, I thought about the heartbreak I've felt in my life, about how much it hurts to feel those kinds of things, but also how necessary every one of those opening moments has been for me, so I could make space for growth.  I don't regret one single painful thing I've experienced.  I needed it all to move forward.

That's the nastiness and the beauty of being alive.

Just now.

We are going into night two tonight.  When Lane is awake I am holding him so close, kissing his forehead over and over again, telling him I love him, and when we lay him down in his crib it's after the best cuddling we can possibly do, a full on full body cuddle love hug family squeeze.

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As an aside, they've reset the stats at Top Baby Blogs....while I wasn't even looking!!  If you want to help us stay afloat, please consider voting for us every day for a few days so I can get back on track!  Try not to be swayed by my cruelty as a mother....

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