Sleep Like a Baby

There are people out there who have babies that drink their bottles, look up at their parents lovingly as they are carried to their cribs, then coo and smile as they are put down before batting their eyelashes and time or two and then falling asleep with a soft little smile on their angelic faces. Well, for those of you who own one of these miracle robot babies, congratulations to you, you've won the lottery!

For the rest of us, we have babies who drink their bottles down and fall fast asleep (and I mean the kind of sleep where you can lift an arm and let it drop, or open and close the baby's mouth to make funny noises and then laugh at it - and the baby still stays asleep), then they coo and roll into you as you pick them up and carry them to their beds, and even if you accidentally run into the door way or the wall or step on a toy and cuss a little too loudly and the baby stays asleep... but when you put the little bundle of joy down into the crib and his head hits the sheets his face twists up and his eyes pop open and out comes a scream as if you chopped odd his pinkey toe! That's the kind I have. It's like they have a link to their beds and know the exact moment you've put them down.... Now if you put them somewhere else they would probably stay asleep...

There are lots of methods out there to getting non-robot babies to sleep. I think I've read about them all. There are lots of people who don't agree with the CIO method (for those of you not hip to the new parent lingo, that stands for Cry It Out). And in reading that side of the argument, I tend to agree with some of it. It's really hard to listen to your baby cry when you know you can stop it by just walking over and picking him up. But I'm also not down with the PUYBEFMFAHAAH method either (that's the ever so popular Pick Up Your Baby Every Five Minutes For An Hour And A Half method).

When Nola was a baby she was awful to get to sleep at night. Then at her 4 or 6 month checkup her pediatrician told me to let her cry for 20 minutes. I was shocked and appalled! Twenty minutes seemed like so long! But after another week of the a fore mentioned PUYBEFMFAHAAH method, I gave it a shot. I put her down and left the room... And I never knew just how long twenty minutes could last. Oh my goodness! She cried the whole 20 minutes! And when I went in to finally get her she had cried so hard she threw up all over herself and her bedding. So I felt bad and just rocked her to sleep for a day or so. But the frustration soon returned and I gave it another shot. She cried the whole 20 minutes again, but with no puke. I got her, comforted her and then put her back. She cried for about 10 more min. and then fell asleep. The next night she cried for 15 min and was asleep. And by about a week or so it was like 5 to 7 minutes and a sleeping baby we had. Then by 2 weeks she was just staying asleep, or going back to sleep on her own (most of the time).

Now the madness begins again. Logan. He's cute. He's smiley. But he sucks at bedtime. He sleeps through the night (usually at least 10 hours) so I can't complain there... but getting him to sleep is torture! So here goes another round of teaching a baby to go to sleep! I am SO NOT looking forward to the next few weeks!