Break Through!

Oh my god...I hesitate to make this pronouncement for fear that I'm wrong...but I think I'm right...we've turned a corner with Scarlett and the Evil Crib. The last few times I've laid her down she's either (halleluha! halleluha!) gone right to sleep or spent a measly few minutes crying, without any real force behind it. It's been about a week and a half that we've been putting her to sleep in her own wonderful bed, and it feels So Damned Sweet to have our bed back. (I did not want to be that parent who ended up having kids in their bed for eighteen years. Or ten. Or four. Or even two!) The first night was beyond dreadful. It took over a solid hour of Ferber method crying (that means leaving for 5, 10, 15 minutes with short visits in between, then starting all over) before she fell asleep, and then she woke up crying--I kid you not--about twenty times before morning mercifully broke. Naptimes during the day have been even harder...there was a day where she basically cried right through one whole morning nap time, skipping it, then when I tried to put her down for her afternoon nap she cried for another two hours!

I am sure I have no need to detail how traumatizing this has been for me. Up until this point, I really never let Scarlett cry much....okay...I never let her cry if I could at all help it. My only excuse for this is that everything I've read tells me that the first six months are all about answering a baby's needs and getting her to trust you. After six months, however, kids develop the power to manipulate and also the ability to understand cause and effect, so I was really waiting for that milestone to become a...da da da dum...Mean Parent. I was resolved when we came back from Hawaii to get starting breaking our little girl of some of her bad habits. But I really wasn't prepared for how hard it would be. Especially when I'd pick her up after an unsuccessful attempt at naptime and she would cling to me so sadly, her little body still heaving and hiccoughing and snivelling, like "Momma, how could you do this to me?" and my heart would just break. It felt like it would never end!

But...knock on wood...I think she's finally getting it! It's amazing to be able to lay her in her crib, wind up her mobile and switch on her white noise machine, kiss her on the forehead, and leave the room! It's amazing to plan on a bedtime between 8 and 9 and actually go get some stuff done after that! It's amazing, this stuff that so many other parents have been able to experience since their kid was born! (Okay, and I probably could have too if I'd been willing to really be tough, but again, I was hesitant to put my foot down before the six-month marker.)

The only thing that's not amazing...she is STILL not sleeping through the night. Some nights she still wakes up between six and twenty times, and now we have further to go to shush her. When we're lucky, she goes until 4 am or so. She doesn't need a middle of the night feeding anymore--she seems perfectly happy to eat in the morning---so I don't know what this is all about except that, crib trained or not, she is still a damned light (read: bad) sleeper. And, I have to face facts...at some point I'm probably going to have to buck up and let her cry in the middle of the night. I just haven't done it yet. I just hope it gets better soon. I did surprisingly well on insufficient molecules of sleep for six months, but I can tell you that my body is OVER it. Now, I drag...I yawn...I crash. I'm ready to go back to eight hours a night, please.

Um, NOW.