For the first few weeks of his life, Z slept in the co-sleeper. Then the non-stop screaming started, and I spent a few month sleeping sitting up with him asleep on my chest. Somehow, we discovered he could sleep on his back, with my arm under his head, but that he would only sleep when touching me. This slowly transitioned to him sleeping in the middle of our bed and he'd spend a portion of the night not touching me, and a portion of the night snuggled up, or on my chest.
Then we got the new pack and play. We brought it home, put a new mattress and sheet on it, and I decided to try getting him to sleep in it. I expected tears (from both of us!), I expected screaming, I expected failure. Instead, I laid him down, gave him a bottle, and before he'd finished drinking it, he was sound asleep on his back, arms in the air, with one foot propped up on the side of the crib. The first night, he slept 9 hours total, the second he slept 11 - he still wakes me up for milk in the night but he pops right off to sleep with no fuss and no muss. If I had known it was this easy, I would've done this WEEKS ago!
Mark and I have an appointment with a nurse at Birth and Beyond who specializes in infant sleep and on helping parents understand how to implement and stick with a "cry it out/modified cry it out" program. The goal is to get Z to go to sleep at a normal baby bed time, and to sleep through to a normal baby wake up time without needing food or attention from us. I'm worried about this for a couple of reasons. 1) I've done all the night work with Zac. I hear him when he cries, I get up with him when he needs it, I feed him when he's hungry. I can't continue to be the primary person losing sleep in the house. 2) I just can't stand to hear him crying and not at least attempt to comfort him. When we were on our way to Bainbridge, he got really upset on the ferry. I couldn't take him out of the carseat because we were about to unload, and he was just screaming like his heart was broken. All I could do was sit in the front seat and talk calmly to him through my own tears. I worry about how I will handle the strictness of "don't pick them up, comfort them for 2 minutes, then leave the room. If they're still crying in 30 minutes, you can go in and comfort them for another 2 minutes". I am afraid I'm going to be pacing the back yard and watching a timer while my boy screams the house down inside.
While there are plenty of single moms out there who have to do this stuff alone, and I know I COULD do it alone if I had to, I don't feel like I should have to be the only one involved in this. That's part of meeting with the specialist. I need someone to explain, rationally, that this is very emotionally hard on moms, and that the best thing for our baby is both parents to take a turn and to give him a double dose of security. We're not moving him into his own room yet, so hopefully the reality of his healthy lungs will result in waking up whichever parent's night it is to do the work needed to help him get into a healthy sleep schedule.
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