Winning more battles in the baby sleep war

We’ve come to realize that Maggie may have developed emotional blackmail techniques at an early age. I say this because her heartfelt sobbing can be seen turning to “oh they’re gone, no need for this facade of weepy any more” when viewed via IPcam.

We set a limit, it’s pretty flexible with what we do at the moment but if in X minutes she’s not calmed down we go and soothe, and if in Y minutes she’s still going we give up this attempt at getting her to sleep so we don’t associate the bed with abandonment. So far we’ve only had one time we reached Y minutes.

Yup, it’s the cry-it-out method, which for the past couple of days has meant 1-2 minutes of crying, another couple of minutes of resigned moaning, and then sleep. It’s also meant she sleeps and isn’t dragging baby ass all day.

While the letting her cry for any reason has been heart troubling, the well rested baby is a significantly better and happier baby. The well rested parent is also more capable of enjoying the well rested baby. It all seems to be working out in the right direction.

There’s still a give-up point at night – if it’s five am on a weekday and she wakes up she’s getting up in bed with us with no attempts to keep her down, there’s just no way we can function at work with that little sleep. It’s not an idea solution, but it works.

Last night at about 4am she woke up after her monitor went psycho, I brought her upstairs and she decided it was time to start talking about her dreams. I definitely want to hear this, not at 4am however, so we went back and put her into her crib and I was the worst parent ever… until she woke up a happy baby and had a great day at daycare.

And that’s where we’re at at nine months and 16 days.