Sacrificing the Now for the Good of the Later

Here we are at 6 weeks. According to Baby Wise, between 6 and 9 weeks "most babies" will drop the middle of the night feeding. That means I'll feed Harper at 10pm and then only get up once around 3am to feed her again until the start of her day at 7am. I'm starting to see her go longer- she'll go from 10/10:30pm to 3am, but then she only goes to 6am. Then I've been doing a quick "snack" feeding and putting her back down to sleep until 7am. Unfortunately, this hasn't always worked, and she'll move around and wiggle and murmur in that hour just enough that I can't sleep (mostly worrying that she'll wake Z).
This morning, though, I had a realization. I soothed and used the pacifier for about thirty minutes and then I finally reswaddled her because she had gotten pretty loose and kept pulling the blankets up over her face. And she fell asleep again! Duh. I think the swaddle will do more than the snack feeding actually. So, I can try that tomorrow.

All of this had me thinking about how often while building a routine for little ones, you have to sacrifice the immediate for the long term. It is so tempting to do whatever it takes to get the baby to stop crying now. You're sleep-deprived and your toddler is crabby and today is just a tough day so you adjust the routine or break it all together. In the middle of the night, when I know I should be letting Harper wiggle and fuss a little longer (she doesn't even cry that much- man, I'm a wimp!), I just think about getting the feeding over and done so I can get back to sleep. It's hard to lie there awake listening to the crying when you know you can put a stop to it quickly and get more sleep that way. However, that only gets me a few more minutes of sleep today and doesn't help get us closer to Harper sleeping through the night.

There are other examples, of course, such as rocking the baby to sleep one more time, or putting the pacifier back in for the tenth time. Each of these things have their place, but I often find that I want the easy, immediate solution at the expense of the long term goal. But, really, I don't want to be putting the pacifier in all night when Harper is 5/6 months old. I also don't want to be rocking her to sleep in a few weeks/months when she weighs a lot more than she does now. These are my priorities and goals as a Mom, so I need to "start as I mean to go"* with implementing them.

One of the most important strategies for me with establishing a routine is to set goals for myself in the daytime (at the start of the day, usually) about what that night and the next day will look like. I find that, in the day, I am much stronger than at night, when my primary motivation is my own sleep. If I want to start letting the baby cry, I decide when I'll start and how long I'll let the baby go before interceding. For example, lately I have set the goal to let Harper fuss/cry for at least three minutes at night. Amazingly, this has been hard to do. Three minutes seems easy in the daytime, but in the dead silence of the night, three minutes can seem like ten. I whip out my cell phone (which I use as my watch at night) and watch the minutes go by and, honestly, with Harper, I haven't been that successful with my goal. I usually make it about two minutes: one lying in bed and one to get my sweatshirt and slippers on.

This leads me to the next struggle I find in establishing a routine. I tend to think that things will magically happen. This is where Baby Wise is a little misleading. Now, every baby is different, so maybe this worked for you, but.... I kept thinking with Baby Z that the next night would be the night when I would just wake up in the morning surprised he never woke up. Every night I went to bed with hope and woke up deflated. There were a few implementation errors on my part, I have to admit, such as barely letting him cry at night from the beginning. I never realized the lightning speed at which I could get out of bed and have him feeding until I actually started to time it. So Z got stuck on the three-hour feeding schedule. I would record his wake-up times which only varied by about 10 minutes either way and convince myself that this meant he wasn't stuck. This ability to hope and rationalize can be helpful in coping with all of the interrupted sleep, but it also kept me from seeing what I needed to do.

It wasn't until the continual hope-deferred pushed me to a breaking point at 10 weeks (1st middle of the night feeding) and then 14 weeks (2nd middle of the night feeding) that I finally decided to let him cry it out at night. On the advice of a friend, I watched the clock to see how long he cried. The first night he cried 15 minutes, the second 8, the third 5 and that was it. He would occasionally wake up after that but I knew he could do it and it usually wasn't very long before he was back to sleep. Now, with Harper, I really don't want to get to that point of frustration before pushing to get to our goal. Out of the two babies, it really should be easier with Harper since she barely cries at all. I have a threshold (I couldn't give you an exact time span) for the amount of crying I hear and then I start to go nuts. Baby Z would hit the threshold pretty much every day at first. Harper hasn't hit it yet. So, I should be able to take a little crying at night, right?

So, I'm renewing my commitment before these witnesses to focus on the long term. I will put Harper down while she's awake (but sleepy) and let her put herself to sleep. I will continue with the bottle despite signs that Harper isn't stoked on it (more on that later- yikes!). I will let Harper cry (current goal: 3 minutes; starting slow) at night. I'll keep everyone posted. The accountability will keep me strong. Go Team!



*From "Secrets of a Baby Whisperer" by Tracy Hogg. A really good book to balance out the somewhat dry, unemotional "Baby Wise."