Crying it out.

We've decided to take our pediatrician's advice and let my son cry himself to sleep. We are using the loved and/or hated "Ferber Method."

The first night I put him to bed at 8:45 and he cried and I went back in every ten to fifteen minutes to soothe him. He cried so hard that he gagged himself repeatedly. By 1 AM I gave in and let him sleep with me. We cuddled and I treasured it. Ferber promises after a week, two weeks at the most, my son will sleep happily in his crib. This breaks my heart a little. No longer feeling his warm little body curled against mine and hearing his tiny little snore.... I can hardly bare it. Of course there are benefits to him sleeping on his own but it sure is a bitter pill to swallow.

This is night two and I feel like a pound of ground round.

I only let him get two short naps in today so that he would be good and tired by the time 8:30 rolled around. So I bathed him, read some of Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends", and nursed him to sleep. Ever so gently I laid him in his crib and tucked him in. He immediately awoke and discovered my despicable betrayal and began to wail.
I kissed him, begged for his forgiveness, and then left to let him scream out his demons for awhile.

Every fifteen to twenty minutes I went back in to soothe him.

At about 10:15 he stopped crying for a few minutes and I panicked. Without the constant wail from his room I felt uneasy. So I went and listened at his door for breathing just to be sure there hadn't been a freak accident that required my immediate attention.

Outside his bedroom door, I stood and listened, holding my breath and straining my ears. Then I hear a soft thump.... and then a wail that assured me that my precious was still just fine, but rather pissed off. He had fallen asleep sitting up and then slumped over, bumping his little noggin on the side of the crib. So I gallantly swept to his rescue, Mommy in shining pajamas. Changed his diaper for good measure and a welcome distraction from the wailing. Soothed, soothed, soothed, and soothed some more. Put him in his crib. Kissed him. Then left.

30 Seconds later he started to wail. He has yet to stop. I am going to give it a few more hours and then surrender. So we can both rest up for round three.


A little joke to lighten the mood...

 A string walks into a bar and asks the barkeep for a beer.
The barkeep says to the string, "sorry, we don't serve strings here."
So the string goes into the alley behind the bar and is still very thirsty so he decides to give it another try. He disguises himself by tying himself into a knot and ruffling up his ends. Then the string confidently walks back into the bar and orders a beer.
The barkeep looks the string up and down, then asks, "aren't you the string that I just kicked outta here?"
The string says, "nope I'm a frayed knot!"