I've been rather neglectful of this blog. Likewise I'm finding keeping up with my 365 Project pictures has fallen by the wayside. I don't really have any excuse, when it comes to taking pictures every day I just feel a lack of inspiration. Of course, I could fill it with pictures of Chloe or pictures of Chloe wrapped onto me in one fashion or another but that would get rather tiresome for everyone else.
I think I was avoiding the blog because I feel like a hypocrite. I've gone on so many times about refusing to let Chloe cry, especially when it comes to sleeping. Most recently I wrote about how we were trying the Gradual Withdrawal method which proved hopeful for the first night or two. But I think those two nights were flukes. Thereafter she was worse than ever. It got to the point where she was waking every 20-60 minutes and it could take 45mins-1.5hrs to get her back to sleep each time. You do the math. It was soul destroying. One night I just broke. It had taken me an hour to get her back to sleep and she was awake again 20 mins later, and there was still a lot of the night left to get through. I was exhausted and the thought of having to be able to function and take care of a very active baby the next day just drove me to tears. Alex packed me off to the spare room, and told me to go sleep and he would take care of her. We'd tried all of my no-cry ideas so now it was time to try something else. So we instigated a very specific, set bedtime routine, we set up some sleep cues like reading the same book right before sleep every night and we tried a modified version of controlled crying. I dislike even writing those words. Now let me just say that this is not the same as leaving a baby to cry-it-out. We did not just put her to bed, shut the door on her and leave her til morning. We did put her to bed awake and then regularly checked on her and soothed her when she was crying, but once settled we left the room again, the aim being that she realised she didn't need one of us in the room beside her to be able to fall asleep. The idea being that in the middle of the night when she roused from sleep, she would be able to fall back to sleep on her own rather than waking up fully, realising we weren't there, getting upset and needing us to put her back to sleep. There are as many different versions of controlled crying techniques as there are books written on babies's sleeping habits, but we didn't continually extend the period we left her for, we went in fairly regularly. I still hated it, it still sucked, I was still terrified that she would hate me for letting her cry or that she would stop being a happy baby. By all accounts it can take several nights of crying before things improve. Luckily that wasn't the case with Chloe. On the second night she was asleep in less than 5 minutes and now she just cuddles her toy and goes straight to sleep without any upset or crying. Her night-wakings have improved as well. She does occasionally wake but generally only makes a few noises and then goes back to sleep. From the first night she's been only fully waking once for a feed at about 2am. And I'm fine with that. I've made no effort to night-wean her, and if she wakes in the night and cries for food I respond to her. If she's hungry I am happy to keep feeding her, I don't expect or require her to sleep totally through the night if she isn't ready for that. She does still know that if she needs something, and cries, that we will respond to that. I don't want her to learn that her cries, her only form of communication, have no value, and I don't think we've taught her that.
Despite the improvement in our sleep, I still feel uncomfortable discussing it with people. I feel that resorting to controlled crying was somewhat an admission of defeat, that I gave up on my principles. I feel like I need to defend my reasons for doing it, to justify it to myself and others, that I will be judged negatively by some for doing it. I still wouldn't recommend it as the first thing to start with. For us it was very much a last resort when I was at the end of my tether and I believe she was at an age where she was receptive to it. I also strongly believe that the work we put in with the gentler methods like the gradual withdrawal made for a much easier transition for her so would always recommend trying them first. I guess we all do the best we can, I did my best to try other methods but in the end I was losing my ability to cope and sometimes compromises have to be made. Luckily Chloe doesn't hate me and is as happy a baby as ever. I have even woken up on the occasionally morning only to realise that she didn't wake after an 11pm feed until the morning. At the moment it's the exception rather than the rule but I know with time it will become more regular as she becomes ready for it.
And talking about developmental milestones, Chloe can now stand unaided for short periods of time! It's only started happening this past week but she is really quite steady on her feet now. She's also much happier to take steps if you hold onto her hands and walk with her, before she would just collapse down and crawl if she wanted to get anywhere. I don't think it will be too long before she's running about the place!
