As I was perusing my blog and developing some ideas for posts, I stumbled across an old post from October. I lamented about being a new MOM and some of the crazy ideas bouncing around in my head.
Now that I'm well on my way into parenthood (E is 10 months old), I feel like an update might be in order.
We have many things happening, all at one time and life is, on occasion, a jumbled mess. I'm happy to say that many of the misgivings and fears that I had about doing the "right" thing by your child have dissolved with the many tears that both E and I have cried over the months. Now if only the body metamorphosis would melt in the same way, I'd be golden.
Although I don't have a solution for my current Mommy issue, E has boycotted sleep and therefore, I am inadvertently boycotting sleep, I will keep you posted.
Somewhere around 9 months old, E caught a cold and then, as is his usual MO, it triggered an ear infection. This is always fun, E is in pain and has all kinds of bowel issues, thanks to antibiotics (which are optional, but you run the chance of a ruptured ear drum).
So, the general rule is, babies need lots of love during periods of illness and all of the normal, well, norms are dropped until they are better. Ten days go by and he appears to be all healed up and happy, except for the fact that he has quit sleeping through the night. I should preface this with the fact that he's been sleeping, with a few exceptions, steadily through the night since 10 weeks old AND had also been good with falling back to sleep on his own.
Now he does not appear to sleep soundly and is only getting about 11 hours of the 14 total hours that a 10 month old requires in a 24 hour period. Although it's somewhat annoying to get up 4 times at night to comfort him, I knew what I signed on for when I decided to become a parent and my biggest issue is that I fear he's not getting enough sleep overall for him to be healthy.
At the moment, I feel, it's a combo of a few things: learning to pull up, cruising, teething, moving to a new home and new daycare, gas, separation anxiety, and bedtime routine instability. We now have a regimented bedtime routine and he seems happy with daycare and our new home, but the other things are all developmental and I'm stuck with them. I just hope that his lack of sleep doesn't affect his general well-being (I'm keeping a detailed sleep log and will discuss with the doctor if it continues).
Currently, I'm struggling with my method for sleep training. As any parent probably knows, there are 50 different ideas about this subject and thousands of opinions about their merits or lack thereof. I was in the camp of Cry It Out and being all hard-nosed, until I tried it....E cried for 2 hours....and vomited. I do not think this is how it's supposed to go and so I abandoned that theory for now. Unfortunately, I just can't find something that seems to work for my son and so I just "spoil" him with rocking, holding, and cajoling to sleep until I can figure something else out.
All suggestions are welcome, but I will be mean in answering if I get any mean comments...just a fair warning from a sleep deprived, probably soon to be PMS-ing, female.
Just for a kick of irony:
No comments:
Post a Comment