Sunday, November 21, 2010
Over an hour!!!
Just spent over an hour waiting for Lenara to fall asleep ... argh!!! How I hate this! But she was a good girl, really trying to fall asleep - but she just couldn't. So I couldn't even blame my frustration on her. Which was even more frustrating. ;) I guess our 3-hour-nap this afternoon wasn't such a great idea... although it felt soooo good at the time...
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Ugh. I know the feeling. I haven't got it in me to "cry it out". I think that I would be the one crying more. I try not to look at the clock but sometimes it just seems to take soooo long! I hate the process also, but I just keep telling myself that it will get better once she starts to learn that she is tired. This is yet another area where I feel like I am doing something wrong because it shouldn't be that hard, yet, I feel like I am doing the right thing for my child.
ReplyDeleteHang in there.
Same here. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing something wrong, bc it feels like too great of a committment to hang in there every evening. On the other hand, I suppose it's only bc lots of people share the opinion that kids are supposed to sleep alone (which I do not agree in general). By now most evenings go pretty smooth and I enjoy taking a break and being close with my baby as well. And I know she also falls asleep with other people taking her to bed, so I don't worry about her getting too focused on me connected to falling asleep. But I always have the sentence in the back of my mind that babies shouldn't connect sleeping time with cuddling time as they learn to misunderstand their own needs. I definitely support co-sleeping, but I wonder if other co-sleepers find a good way of separating falling asleep and cuddling. And yet, as I write this it seems ridiculous to me. If I had a choice, I would prefer falling asleep in someone's arms as well. And then again I think, why should we force us to separate these too things every night, when 95% of the cases we both prefer it this way. Falling asleep actually is not the main problem anymore. I don't mind (most of the times) taking this break for 15-60 minutes. She lays down and tries to fall asleep - no being angry for being sent to bed or jumping on the bed anymore. So no more fights, which makes it easier. But I wish she wouldn't wake up again and again until she falls into the real deep sleep. There are few nights, she just sleeps and that's it. I can almost see a pattern (probably the sleeping phases, I didn't get into it yet): she wakes up 1 hour later, then every 20-30 minutes later (up to 4 times). And she gets worried/angry, bc I'm not next to her anymore. She tells me (literally: "lay down" pointing to my pillow) to lie down. The more angry she got the longer it takes her to fall back asleep. So usually I hurry to go in there as soon as I hear some weeping. Sometimes putting the pacifier back in does the job and I can go out right away. But like I say, when she got angry about my leaving, it might take another 15 minutes. Sometimes it doesn't seem to "work" at all, so I take her back to the living room to prepare for going to bed (lights off, computer off, set alarm...) and then go to bed early myself - frustrating as I usually look forward to my 2 hours Mommy time -- no, Kerstin time I should rather say! And I wonder, why she hasn't learnt that I'm going out after she fell asleep and that I'm always coming, if she wakes up. No need to get angry. We've been doing this for almost all her life. Or maybe she has learnt that she has to be angry, so I come back? But this would involve that she realized not being angry doesn't make me come back - which has never been the case. So it seems like the peaceful falling asleep together has the price of her getting angry at me/me spending too much time waiting in bed, instead of enjoying my evenings. Any idea for a better solution? I don't have an outside view anymore... and there have been 3 weeks (a month ago before she got sick again) that she didn't wake up. I was hoping this would be a new era... but it was a PHASE...
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