Self-soothing

After months of nursing and cuddling our baby Ian to sleep, we are trying to teach him now to fall asleep on his own. This is not some new concept that we have just learned and we had really tried it from the start, since we had 3 others to learn from, but something with this one has just made it harder to accomplish.

One reason being is that maybe we're just enjoying our cuddling time more. Maybe we realize that our time spent doing things around the house can just as pleasantly be spent snuggling with the baby.

Another reason could be that I often need some time to rest as well, since I get up often at night. Although that would probably cease if he learns to fall back asleep on his own!

But one of my biggest reasons for not enforcing the self-soothing method for such a length of time is that this little guy doesn't just cry and wear himself down. He cries and gets more worked up. He wakes up the next time or in the morning remembering how much he cried for you to comfort him and then makes you build up his trust the entire next day by insisting you are not going to put him through that again. He'll start crying as hard as he did when he fell asleep, almost as though he remembers it all too well.

In contrast, if we pick him up and settle him down and allow him to fall asleep and then lay him down, he is a much happier and more trusting baby than if we do it the other way. Granted, he may still not sleep well through the night, but he's much easier to lay back down in his bed after he's nursed or been held. The other way, he takes offense to the crib rather than accepting his own bed space as he does when we don't make him cry and wail to get to sleep.

So, once again, I am torn between experts & research verses my heart & instincts to soothe my baby and decide what's best for him (and us) and what will help him in the long run without him becoming totally reliant on us in certain aspects. After trying it both ways for several evenings each, I think with this little guy, I am going to have to lean toward my gut feeling and see where that leads us. Some rules just don't apply to all people, and for this baby, he's helping me to see that to some people, there are just some rules that don't work out, no matter how much you want them to.

(I think I just wrote my way out of self-soothing, which is what I said, at the beginning of the blog, that we were trying to teach him. Guess I'll keep you posted on what ended up working!)