Wow. A life outside of being Mama has been pretty much non-existent for at least the last month. My sister and her husband came to visit over Christmas and New Year's. It was wonderful. They were super laid-back about everything, so I didn't feel pressured to put on a whole song and dance for them while trying to keep up with the household and with Dima. They headed back home on the second - and Dima has been insane since!
We've always cuddled with him and rocked him to sleep or let him fall asleep while feeding, but all of a sudden, he just couldn't come down enough to nap or sleep at night! No matter what we tried (rocking, bouncing with him on a gymnastic ball, pushing him in his stroller, feeding him, swaddling him, not swaddling him, so on and so on and so on). For the first few weeks, we tried to let it slide because we had recently discovered he's lactose intolerant so we thought maybe he was just getting adjusted to the change.... Except he still does it! If I lay him down for a nap and leave the room, he cries. As soon as we come back in, he smiles and plays for hours!
So between spending fun time with him, running errands, keeping house AND trying to get him to sleep, I have been going non-stop. Oh! And Leo has hurt his back TWICE in the last month, both times over the weekend, making it so that I had to do everything since he literally couldn't do anything. I told him this a couple of days ago while he was laid up on the couch, but mentally I am not capable of doing everything on my own for more than a few days. After day three of no-Leo, I was a mess. Fortunately, his back is okay more or less so I was able to get in some down time last night and recoup for the week.
Anyway, I mention all that because we decided to 'Ferberize' Dima - meaning, we're letting him cry it out aka doing the Ferber Method. We started yesterday. His first nap was HORRIBLE. It took an hour for him to finally cry himself to sleep, which hard-core made me feel like a emphasized textrabenmutteremphasized text, and he only slept for 30 minutes. His second nap was in his stroller for 30 minutes, and he was apparently too damaged to even attempt a third nap. (Babies at his age are supposed to sleep about 5 hours during the day and 11 at night.) When he went to bed for the night, he cried for 40 minutes and only woke up once before we went to bed around 11 (although he woke up 6 times between then and 6:30 this morning).
He's currently taking his first nap for today and was almost asleep while I was feeding him, so I left (without trying to tip-toe out which we'd always been doing) while he made himself comfortable and there was no crying whatsoever. He's been asleep now for 30 minutes although I think he's getting restless but am hoping he'll fall back asleep for at least 30 more minutes.
There seems to be a lot of negativity about letting a baby cry it out and trying to get him to sleep all night since 5-month-olds usually need to be fed once or twice during the night, but I'm not even asking that he sleep all night! I just can't keep spending hours on end trying to get him to fall asleep everyday and trying to get him back to sleep at night. He's gotten ridiculous lately about crying emphasized textat least once an houremphasized text while everyone's trying to sleep. Dima and I are both like zombies lately. So I'm hoping he'll learn to soothe himself to sleep so that all of us feel more rested during the day.
All in all, I feel horrible about it. I teared up a bit yesterday whenever he would finally fall asleep since he basically gave up asking his mama for help, but Leo and I both agree that we think he's mature enough mentally to start learning to self-soothe, so we're going to stick it out for a few more days and see if his sleeping habits improve. If not, then we'll wait another month and try again then.
The Beast is officially awake. 40 minutes but no crying. Not horrible.
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