To Cry or Not to Cry

Ok, so I know there are a lot of theories on how to put your kids to sleep, and how to teach them to go to sleep on their own. Well with Hannah, I rocked her until she was ASLEEP every day of her life until 11mos. Then we ventured into the journey of letting her put herself to sleep. Well after 3 weeks of long nights of crying (both her and me) she finally learned how to go to sleep on her own. She sucks her thumb so that his her comfort aide along with her pink blanket. We had long nights of crying maybe 1.5hrs was the max, but she learned to do it. We're glad now that we did it that way.

Now Caleb, I thought lets try this a little sooner before he is able to stand up and jump wildly banging the crib against the wall. So lately he has been putting himself to sleep for nap times....I'm guessing he's so tired that he just sucks he 2 fingers and lays on his stomach and goes to sleep. YEAH!! So he'd been doing good for nap time for several days, both morning and afternoon nap.....I thought this is going to be EASY. Well first of all I don't think anything about being a parent is easy...so anyway last night he went to sleep after I nursed him around 9pm...well at 3:45am he wakes up, now the past several nights he'd kinda stir in the middle of the night and just go back to sleep. OH NO not anymore. He now rolls around all in his bed and wedges himself in the corner of his crib, pushing with he legs to scoot further only to be stopped by his bumper pads in his crib. This makes him quite upset. Then he'll flip onto his back and scream...very loudly. Not the tiny scream of an infant. I lay there waiting for miss Hannah next door to wake up....so far she has been a trooper. I just tell her that Caleb is learning to go to sleep on his own and he'll be ok so stay in your bed and go to sleep. She's such a good little girl : )

Back to my story, so last night I would get up, flip him back onto his stomach, wipe all the snot off his face and we'd try again....well this went on until about 5:30am. As soon as I would flip him to his tummy he'd flip back over onto his back, and then he just couldn't figure out that he needed to be back on his stomach like he likes to go to sleep. Anyway....Jeremy and I are laying there in bed thinking "Are we doing the right thing". I'm praying boldy for the Lord to give little Caleb peace and for him to just go to sleep. Psalm 127:2 says that the Lord gives sleep to those he loves....I'm thinking I need sleep, Lord you love me, so make my baby go to sleep so that I can sleep. I praying believing it can happen. Well after 1.5hrs I think, maybe I should get him. Well I don't EVER feed him in the middle of the night anymore and haven't for months, but I think at this point, anything to make this baby be quite.....so I nurse him for maybe 10minutes and he is OUT LIKE A LIGHT. I put him back in his bed and he sleeps until 9:30am. I finally get back to sleep about 6am and Hannah is up and ready to go at 7am. She never heard a peep all night....atleast she's the well rested one of the bunch.

So today I think....do we need to wait until he's older to do this crying thing, is he too little, I know he can soothe himself, why does he do this?? Is he being manipulative? Is he teething and just uncomfortable. So we'll see how tonight goes. I'm not quite sure what we're gonna do.

However today at nap time, I rocked him and put him down. After he'd been sleep for an hour, he woke up crying. So i'm peering into his room to see what he's doing, of course he'd flipped over on his back and he's holding his blue blanket and sucking his fingers....I watch as he rolls around for a little while, and then suddenly he gets on his side, his eyes get heavy and he goes to SLEEP, sucking his fingers, holding his blanket.....ALL BY HIMSELF. YEAH!! Maybe he'll do this in the middle of the night. So pray for my little man to sleep good and maybe tonight we'll all get some sleep.