Vanessa

We have no other recourse. 

As much as I talked about how much I hate baby sleep books in the last post, we bought one more.  Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby by Marc Weissbluth.  I know whenever I get a sleep book I am confident and eager to see it work and this one is no different.  Except that if this doesn’t work there is seriously nothing more to do. 

This is complete and total cry-it-out.  Put her in the crib and don’t get her out til morning.  We did some practice runs last night and for naps today and the real problem is that the Squeaker doesn’t give up and lay down.  Tonight for example.  She cried hysterically for 10 mins and since then intermittenly every 5 mins.  Why?  Because she falls asleep standing up holding on to the crib rails and when she starts to fall she wakes up and cries hysterically again.  She just won’t sit down or lay down.  And she knows how to.  She pulls up and sits back down on her own all the time.  The last month we have been showing her how to sit down and lay on her side.  But she won’t do it.  Ack. 

This is what prompted this method of sleep training.  Everything that we have tried to teach her how to sleep has been completely ineffective.  She still relies on us totally to fall asleep.  She’s only going to learn if she does it on her own.  Eventually she’ll get so sleepy she’ll fall backward on her bum and hopefully lay down and go to sleep.  That or she’ll go crashing into a crib rail which I hope really won’t happen because then we’ll have to start the process all over again.

It’s a little ridiculous how much we have fought this.  We have literally tried every play in the playbook.  We’ve tried Sears, Pantley, West.  All different schools of thought, all different methods and all failures.  Ok, we haven’t tried Ferber but at this point we just need this done.  The whole gradual thing doesn’t work.  It’s been gradual for 9 months.

So here we are.  Me glued to the video monitor (which our friend graciously lent us) hoping that the next time O cries she will plunk down on her butt and go to sleep.  Kraft coming in and out of his office to look at the monitor.  And O so so sleepy fighting a battle she can’t win. 

Saint in charge of sleep problems, pray for us.

It has been crazy around this house.  Lots to tell. 

I had posted about the first couple days of sleep training.  It got great really fast.  Amen.  Alleluia. 

Until Day 8 or 9. 

The Squeaker started teething.  Damn.  We couldn’t get back on the sleep train since then.  She teethed (toothed?) for a couple days.  Then I realized that O was not eating very much.  She wasn’t nursing as much and not eating as much solid food.  Then her diapers became lighter and she seemed to not be peeing as much. 

Is my milk supply decreasing?  Yup.  I tried to pump about 3 hours after last feeding her and could not even get an ounce out.  Damn again.  I’m guessing the night weaning we did was too drastic of a change for my milk supply and when O stopped eating at night my milk decided to stop, too.  That just shows how much milk she was drinking at night. 

Ok, we need to buy formula.  My friend sent me a link to Dr. Sears’ formula comparison chart.  After reading that I decide that buying a toddler formula that does not contain corn syrup was the best thing to buy.  For some reason I guess that Whole Foods would not carry a formula that contains corn syrup so we go there.  They only had two formulas.  One was for toddlers and one was a regular organic formula.  I try to buy O organic stuff and it had a DHA supplement which the other one did not contain, so we go with Earth’s Best Infant Formula. 

We get home and I make O 4oz of formula.  She guzzles it down no problem.  I tried for about 20mins to get her to burp with no luck so I stick her in the exersaucer.  Five minutes later she projectile vomits, not just the 4oz of formula she just ate, but everything in her stomach.  I didn’t even know a kid could hold that much liquid in their body.  Brandon picks her up and whisks her off the the bathtub.  I’m not sure what to do so I call a couple people.  While I’m on the phone with my mom and pouring water over O I see that see is covered in very red and raised hives.  O has eczema so her breaking out in a rash isn’t super alien to us but hives that are actual welts is totally different.  I hang up on my mom and run for the baking soda to put in the bath water that a nurse told us soothes skin reactions.  O is scratching furiously. 

Kraft calls the after hours nurse line and we answer a gazillion questions.  Short story, give her Benadryl and take her to the ER because if she has an anaphylatic reaction it will happen in the next hour. 

Off we go to Dell Children’s.  O is fine but starts falling asleep in the car which worries us so we’re both singing at the top of our lungs to keep her awake.  Probably just the Benadryl but we know you’re not supposed to let people who get concussions fall asleep, I thought that might be good advice to follow at the moment.  We get there.  All the staff is super calm and very nice. 

Again, short story, Dell Children’s is wonderful and O just had a super allergic reaction to that specific formula.  The doc knows she is not allergic to lactose because she has been breastfeeding this whole time but we have to give her Alimentum formula just in case since we don’t know what she is allergic to. 

O was fine and the hives were slowly going away.  After seeing her doc a few days later, we were told to see an allergist to find out exactly what she is allergic to.  Phew.  But overall, O is doing fine and guzzling down that formula.  She is also almost 100% weaned.  Only nurses when she wakes up and she is increasingly getting annoyed with it because she gets such little milk.  Will probably not even offer it tomorrow.  Her appetite is great now.  Eating a surprising amount of solid food.  Poor kid, she was hungry.

After all this you can guess her sleep is ridiculous.  We tried to get back on the Sleep Lady’s schedule which was working beautifully at the beginning but now is a total nightmare.  After all this commotion it started taking a solid hour of screaming/crying to get her to sleep for naps and nighttime. 

We continued in this horrendous pattern for a week until last night when I had a total meltdown.  I can’t spend 3 hours a day trying to get her to sleep and have her screaming at me the whole time consistently.  We tried to get her back on schedule for about a week with absolutely no progress and if anything her sleep was getting worse.  She was starting to wake up every couple hours at night instead of sleeping at least until 1am as usual. 

Last night I declared a big F you to the Sleep Lady and said obviously O and schedules do not get along.  I vowed to just watch her very carefully all day and only put her down when she was sleepy and not try to make her sleep hour-long naps.  My very wise mama friend today told me that she’s always done this.  She doesn’t go by the clock but by what her daughter needs and her daughter has been sleeping wonderfully for months. 

And today, O has slept great.  Sure her naps were only 20mins and 40mins long but then she went to sleep for the night in 8mins.  You can’t argue with facts.  I have half a mind to pitch all these sleep books out the window.  Them and their bossy, condescending advice that haunts you at night. 

Last night in our misery we looked up sleep training problem solvers and found some really great links that are hilarious: Train Wreck and this one we found very interesting about too much attachment parenting and whether crying-it-out is actually harmful like Sears says it is: Baby Sleep Training Re-examined.

Moral of story – don’t follow the advice of a “pert, blonde social worker” and just trust your gut and your baby.  You’ll both be much saner and much happier. 

I will at least give Kim West a thank you for getting us to put O in the crib consistently and for night weaning.  I am actually very happy to not be breastfeeding anymore, but that’s for another post.

So we are on Day 8 of sleep training.  At the end of it I’ll give a summative evaluation of our progress which should be like day 14 or so. 

But for now I am pretty pissed at Kim West or the “Sleep Lady” as she likes to call herself.  So let’s put aside that she calls herself the “Sleep Lady” and that her method is called the “Sleep Lady Shuffle”.  And let’s put aside that parents that have been sleep-deprived for over half a year have no patience for cutesy little titles, they just want their baby sleeping. 

When it comes down to it, she is a moneychanger.  You know, like the people that Jesus overturned their tables and kicked them out of the Temple.  Yeah, she’s one of those.  She exploits the desperate.  I don’t mind at all paying full price for books or whatever but she wrote her book with the express intention of making more money off of it.  She is a licensed social worker or something so I’m sure she is worth a hefty price for her private consulations.  But you can call her for private over-the-phone consultations.  For one hour it is $150, for her full services it is $450, and to join her online forum just to ask a few questions in public, it is $40.  Gimme a break.  Who can pay that?  I’m sure few can pay it but many make the sacrifice because they’re so desperate for help.

At one point we were actually desperate enough to entertain the idea of paying the $450 because the Squeaker is such a tough case and then we came to our senses and just bought her book. 

But, the thing is, she writes just enough in her book for you to get the basics of the method but not enough to actually get you through it.  All the other sleep books I’ve read definitely answer as many common questions as they can think of.  Kim West doesn’t.  And I’m not talking specific questions like:

• What do I do when my daughter has asthma and was 6 weeks premature and my husband smokes and we have a cat in an efficiency apartment? 

I want the answer to very common problems that have come up that everyone I’m sure has.  Like:

• What do we do when she wakes up from her nap and has not slept a full hour?  Do we just chalk it up as a bad nap or do we put her back down and start over?

• What happens if she starts teething in the middle of the training?  Do we have to stick to whatever routine we’re doing that day or can we back up a few days and be a little closer to her crib?

• How does the method change when you live in a one bedroom apartment and her crib is in your room?

She kinda touches on these questions but doesn’t explain the answers in enough detail to actually give you an answer.  I like to give people the benefit of the doubt but in this case I’m pretty sure she doesn’t fully answer these questions because she hopes you’ll need to pay for her private services.

I really think that the method of sleep training she figured out is good and effective but I think she is manipulating vulnerable parents.  She’s a moneychanger.