Other days, I am convinced that someone else on our block has the same video monitor we do and has picked up our signal. The mom is watching us, shaking her head at our situation and 'tsk, tsk-ing', while judging me. She's probably even calling her stay at home mom friend up to talk about me. "Can you believe this mom is just letting her baby cry like that?! Listen (Holds monitor up to phone)." I'm not even kidding. I really feel she's out there.
I am not a fan of letting Silver cry it out. And I don't believe in the cry it out method. To be honest, I think the Baby Wise method is entirely crazy because when babies cry it's because they need something. But when I KNOW Silver's exhausted because she's 'sung her sleepy song' as I call it, she's not hungry, she's had a diaper change, and she is merely pissed off at the world (or probably just me), because she can't fall asleep, what else am I left to do? She has to figure it out. Because when I rock her, she just wails (while trying to latch on to me through my shirt). When I nurse her, she falls asleep and the second I go to lay her down, we're back to wailing. So she has to figure it out.
I'm a researcher at heart. I've read most of The No-Cry Sleep Solution. I've started reading The Happiest Baby on the Block, and even have the DVD set to ship to me on our next video queue... I've read about sleeping solutions on quite a few blogs and parenting websites. All of which were extremely helpful and filled with the most fantastic ideas... yet don't seem to be working for us just yet. But we're working on it. We've been working on it.
The second Silver wipes her eyes, gives a yawn, or buries her head in my chest it's go time. I'm not even kidding. I practically sprint to her crib. No, not really, but time is definitely of the essence. And some days Silver actually goes to sleep without putting up a fight. Those days are little miracle days where I do an oh my goodness, freak out with excitement dance, while looking into the video monitor, smiling with awe and joy at the miraculousness.
What did I do to make that go so well? Is it because we played on her bouncer instead of on her play mat before heading to her crib? Is it because she is swaddled extra perfectly? Maybe the little musical soother played the most perfect combination of classical music and rainforest sounds. Perhaps it was that the sun was a little overcast so it's darker in her room... All of the factors can drive a mama crazy. I've become ritualistic and don't even know for sure what my rituals are.
She usually eventually does figure it out. Sometimes it's after just a couple minutes of yelling at me. Sometimes, on the bad days, like today, it's been an entire hour of her trying to work it out with me intermittently checking on her so she knows she hasn't been abandoned. I'm probably going to have to go in there and let her think she's won. We'll try to play for a little bit, but she will be so darn grumpy, we'll go straight back to her crib, where she will probably quickly cave. And when she does cave, it is so bizarre, she will go from screaming, with her eyes squeezed tight, to silence with the sweetest sleeping face you've ever seen. You wouldn't think it was the same baby who had been screaming in protest just moments before.
My mom gets Silver to fall asleep without much fighting almost every time she watches her. Although my mom does have to work her magic. She tells me she thinks that Silver must just be a genius, like Einstein, who never slept... And I love her for that. Finding the beauty in our exhausting situation. All I know, is that eventually Silver will learn to fall asleep without hating me and every second of our 'routine'. Because she has to. And, I now more than EVER cherish those beautiful moments, from the time she was maybe about 2 months, until she was about 3 months old. When she would sing herself to sleep at any given moment and actually take naps. Lots of naps. Beautiful, glorious, angelic naps. And she even slept. through. the. night...
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