ZZZZZZZZZZZZ or not?

I thought I would document this, since its happening less and less at our house nowadays.

Rob and I have raised some supercute, supersweet, SLEEP-HATERS. And, we love sleep so much. I don't know what we've done wrong. Way back in the day, like November 2010, I thought it was about time to start trying to get Max closer to sleeping through the night. I wanted to start a little process called Ferber that we used with Rylan (except we didn't find out about Ferber until he was past the age of 1, oops). Basically when they cry at night, you make sure they aren't poopy, overloaded with pee, or febrile. If all of the above are negative you put the pacey back in their mouth, do a little shushing, "mama loves you" and go out of the room. Rinse and repeat till baby can go back to sleep.


Except I got Rocky Mtn Spotted Fever. Or, as I like to call it, Death Fever. At this time, it was just easier to feed him and go back to bed, especially since he was breastfed and I didn't even have to heat up a bottle. And then it was the holidays and you don't want to make your baby cry over Christmas. During this time, Max actually had many nights where he slept till 5am or later before waking and I thought (stupidly) that he was going to work the sleeping all night thing out all by himself. He didn't. Death Fever continued. Then Max's ear plagues started. I tried to "ferber" but my little devil on one shoulder would say "he's probably hurting, you are a bad mom." The angel on the other would say "he's fine, you fed him, you changed him, he's fine." But the devil had a way more convincing argument. Then came vacations. When sharing a room, you don't want your two year old to wake up, so you run and feed your baby as fast as you can. Fast forward to almost 9 months of life. The days of Max sleeping till 5am or later without crying have gone away, we are getting up every night, usually between 2am and 3am. EVERY NIGHT. And Tuesday of this week? He stayed up till 11pm, then got up at 3am and 5am.


Ferbering has commenced. No more nursing to sleep little Max. A gigantic bottle and off to bed. Mommy or daddy go in and pat a bottom, "shhhhhhhhh", turn on his musical seahorse, and give him the option of the pacey and leave. We sit and listen to the wails, telling ourselves to be strong, stay the course. We go back in after a few minutes and repeat the above. Then we start stretching out our intervels.


On the plus side, I feel like a total moo cow getting plugged up to the pump to make sure we have giant bottles at night. On the more plus side, waiting to go back in and pat his butt is giving me more time for blogging.