Friday, March 16, 2012

Note to self on Baby Sleep

In sad news, my rabbit pants have a massive rip in the knee (see how if you only have one pants they become big news?) They were given to me after Noah's birth (in that "in between stage" one has between childbirth and the three months after) by my mom-in-law, who had used them for yoga for several years. I wore them at least half the week for 2 years. So they have had a good run. I'm working on repairing them, but they're going to need a patch. Any patching tips?

This is a post to remind myself when I start to freak out about Tiny Blob not sleeping:

Noah didn't sleep well, but this challenge to parenting was balanced in all sorts of ways. Noah's almost two now, and he usually sleeps through the night in his own room. He's only done so for about 2 months. We still usually stay with him until he's asleep, or very close to sleep. We're working on it, but it's pretty low priority. We probably did almost everything wrong, and he still sleeps now.

With Tiny, Blob, I want to remember that two years is not infinity. Remember that my going back to work totally messed up Noah's brilliant sleep. He never slept well after that. We tried everything except leaving him to cry. And to be honest, there was a fair amount of crying involved nonetheless. We tried making him sleep in his crib, we tried Elizabeth Pantley, we tried not breastfeeding him to sleep. We ended up with his cot mattress next to our mattress on the floor, and sometimes even that offended him. Some things seemed to help (not feeding him every time he woke up, asking Eug to try soothing him first, not changing his diaper in the night), but the power struggles made us fear the hours of 6-8pm. Upheaval was our enemy. And we had a lot of it: 3 moves (two within Boston, one across continents), 3 months of traveling, an additional 3 international trips and 2 US trips.

This time around, maybe Tiny blob will sleep, probably not. It's probably ok. He will sleep eventually. I want to tell myself not to do anything that will make me feel icky afterwards. It's not the end of the world if he breastfeeds to sleep, and if I can persuade him not to, so much the better. I'll try not to worry if he leads sometimes. It's also ok if he cries just a little, if I can't handle him for one more second. He doesn't have a crib, but if he seems ready to sleep further from us, I want to let him try. And bring him back if it turns out he didn't really want to after all.

1 comment:

leah said...

patching tip: cut a square or circle of similar weight fabric to that of your pants. make it bigger than the hole. place on top of hole and sew the patch about 1/4 inch from the edge all the way around to the good non-ripped part of the pants fabric. You're done!

better tip: give them to someone in your family who has an ironing board and a fabric stash and perhaps also applique material, and they will do it for you.