Crying and sleeping and mostly crying

Last Sunday I was at church, standing in the hallway waiting for Sunday school to be over so I could go to relief society. I had skipped Sunday school because Quinn desperately needed a nap so I took her into the mothers room and nursed her to sleep. Like clockwork, she woke up after 30 minutes. The longest nap I could get her to take was 45 minutes, but that was a rare occurrence. I would even wait inside her room, on the floor next to the crib, and I would put her binki back in her mouth as soon as she started to stir. It didn't work. She couldn't go back to sleep. I tried nursing, even though I wanted to break the nursing to sleep association. It didn't  work either. That particular Sunday morning, Quinn woke up early and so I tried to get her to nap before church, so that I could maybe stay almost the whole three hours. We ended up being 20 minutes late and no nap was taken. 

So there I was, standing with my overtired baby in the hall. A lady I had talked to a couple of times came and stood by me. Her one year old started to play with Quinn and we started talking. I told her how Quinn would never nap. I told her that I've read so many sleep books and they aren't helping. I did not want to let her cry it out, that is bad! I had had a headache for over a month. It was a tension headache, and I was super tense in my upper back and neck. I had been sleeping on a camping pad in her room, when she would wake up and I was too tired to rock her back to sleep, I would just sleep next to her. But it wasn't helping anymore. I told her that Quinn would just roll around in the middle of the night, like she couldn't get comfortable. And I would resort to nursing, but that stopped working after awhile. I was practically crying while I told her all these things. I hated everyone who was sleeping at night, and who got to take naps whenever they wanted. I hated that my baby was grumpy all day from being tired, and that I seemed to spend all day every day rocking her to sleep for her to nap only 30 minutes, and that I could not figure out, for the life of me, how to give her what she needed. I don't think it was safe for me to be driving at all. I read somewhere that if you get less than six hours of sleep for so many nights in a row it was like driving drunk. Well, I had gotten less than six for like 200 nights in a row, and I could definitely feel it. It was hard to react to things while I was driving, things like red lights. I didn't run any, that I know of, but I definitely had some close calls over the last few months. I cried so many times after laying her down, just to have her wake up again. And people would say super helpful things like, why don't you sleep when she sleeps?! Oh, why didn't I think of that? Wait, I did. And I tried all the time. How am I supposed to fall asleep when I am this overtired, with that 30 minute clock ticking in the back of my mind?! Yeah, I was not that fun to hang out with. Maybe I'm still not, I don't know. 

Anyways, she listened and she knew exactly what I was talking about. Sometimes I would try to talk to people about her sleep habits and they would be like, oh "she is teething/growing." And I'd be like "yeah, she has been teething/growing since the day she left my belly. Thanks for your useless tip." I can't blame them though, I think most babies sleep pretty well. Or maybe their moms just don't talk about it, because they feel like if they tell people they can't get their baby to sleep, maybe they will think she is a bad mom. That's how I felt at least. Quinn was not the greatest newborn, but when she was about eight weeks old, she started sleeping in a four hour stretch at night. I felt awesome. I remember telling myself that I had this whole mom thing figured out. Other moms just weren't as intuitive as I was, or else their baby would be happy, too. Right?! WRONG!!! That lasted a few short weeks and then for almost three months it was awful. Neither of us were happy because neither of us could sleep. 

So, back to me and my friend in the hallway, she tells me that her baby was the same, and that I need to go rent a good movie, put her to bed, and let her cry it out. I did not want to do that. I told her I couldn't. What if Quinn hated me after that? What if she just felt abandoned and she just gave up on life? What if it went on and on and didn't work? She told me that her baby was around six months old (same as Quinn) and it took her an hour. Then she slept through the night and started napping better right away. Then, her baby was way happier.

 Now, I had talked to other people who had tried crying it out and heard horror stories. One lady told me that she did it with her eight month old, and she cried for three hours and never have up and she didn't sleep well until she was over a year old. Another lady told me that she did it with her 18 month old, because she was pregnant an could no longer gently set him in his crib after he fell asleep. She let him cry and after an hour and a half, he threw up from it. She said it was a six month process. So, these stories made me feel like if I was going to do it, I had to do it now. We were planning on going camping three weeks from that day and I couldn't wait another month to start it. I had to do it. 

I cried off and on that whole day. I did not want to do it. But I was at my wit's end. I could not take any more. The constant headache and the dangerous driving... Yikes. I had tried the no cry sleep training methods and they helped a little, but it had been two months of that with no success. I called my mom and cried. I cried when Kelly came home and I told him what I was going to do. He told me that he'd been trying to get me to do it forever and he asked "why now?" I have him my reasons and told him that I was going to sit outside after I put her to bed and he said he would stay inside with her. I went and got the camp chair out of the garage and I was ready. I just didn't want to hear the crying. So, that night I fe her baby food with rice cereal, gave her her bath, read a story, then she nursed. And she went right to sleep. I went downstairs prepared to leave when she woke up after 45 minutes or whatever. She woke up once after 30 minutes and I gave her her binki. But then I told Kelly, I'm not going in there again. I won't go back in her room until 11:00-12:00 to feed her because she will be hungry. (I wasn't trying to wean her from night feedings, I don't mind getting up to feed her if she goes right back to sleep). After that, she slept like a champ! She didn't wake up until 12:30. I fed her and she went back to sleep. She woke up at 2:00 and cried for a minute and went back to sleep. She woke up at 4:00 and cried for a long time, when she started to get out of control after 25 minutes I went in and gave her her binki and she went back to sleep until 6:30. I went in her room and she was just laying there, awake. I felt awful. Maybe she didn't cry because she felt like no one would hear her! But once I got her up and fed her, she seemed happier. Her naps were better than before that day, two short 45 minute naps in the morning and then she took a longer one that afternoon. That's a huge step up from 5-6 30 minute naps a day. It got better each day. She is still inconsistent. I decided to feed her when she wakes up around 4 in the morning because she cried one time for an hour and a half, she was hungry. I don't want my baby to go hungry, and even though the books day she doesn't need to eat more than once a night, I don't care. Some nights she only wakes up once. One night, she slept until 5 in the morning, then she ate and went back to sleep. I slept almost seven hours straight for the first time since she had been born! It was awesome. I wanted to keep sleeping. Her naps are still inconsistent, but they are always at least 45 minutes. A lot of the time I can lay her in the crib without rocking her and she will roll over and go to sleep. Yesterday, she napper for more than two hours and so did I. I feel so good. We are both so much happier. When she wakes up at night, and it hasn't been more than four hours since she last ate, I let her cry for a minute or two and then she goes back to sleep on her own most of the time. Maybe she would have done this all along if I hadn't rushed in there at every little noise she made. I was just always afraid that if I didn't get her back to sleep right away, then she wouldn't go back to sleep. I also think that the methods I used from Elizabeth Pantley's book helped her be more prepared to fall asleep on her own. Now she knows that she can do it, and she does it most of the time. She wakes up between 7 and 8:00 most mornings, and it is so nice to have a baby that's a little bit predictable. I feel like I have a little more control over my life again. She has had two teeth pop through in the last few days, so that has made nap time a little harder, but it is still way better than it was! Looking back, I wouldn't have done it much earlier than I did. I still believe that letting your baby cry it out is wrong when they are teeny tiny. Apparently people say that 6 months is the age where it's ok. It was okay for us at five and a half months. She seems to have developed so much more since I started doing this, she doesn't get frustrated as easily and she is learning so fast! Also, she doesn't hate me. :) 

This morning: