Parenting Rant. Feel free to ignore.
I've been reading back posts from the mom blog Ask Moxie, and came across this one:
http://www.askmoxie.org/2007/12/samantha-needs.html#comments
That poor mom. I know how she feels, I really really do.
Having Gwen as my first has given me some sort-of-PTSD symptoms. Or at least, I have a lot of fear and dread to work through with this new baby. The labor was the first thing- towards the end of my pregnancy I was starting to panic thinking about it. Her labor was so long and so brutal and it was just horrible. I didn't realize how traumatized I was about it until I was going into it again. But Soji's super short 4.5 hour labor was obviously so much better.
The next thing, and the one that really scares me more than the labor did, is the sleep regression that happens at 4 months. I'm terrified of it. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. It started the day after my birthday with Gwen and went on and on and on. I felt physically ill from no sleep. She never napped; she only slept 45 minutes at a time a night and needed endless soothing. I got a referral from my community for a grandma to come and watch her for a couple of hours twice a week or so for cheap and would go upstairs and put a pillow on my head to shut out the screaming and fall off a cliff into sleep so deep it felt like I was dying. I read all the books. I tried all the suggestions. Daytime and nighttime schedules, charts, propping up the mattress, co-sleeping, white noise, music, loveys, having someone else soothe her, trying to get her to take pacifiers or bottles or anything to give me a break and let me sleep more than 20 minutes at a time. Finally I did the cry it out method, because it had come down to either that or weaning her onto formula. I couldn't take it anymore. I was broken.
Crying it out worked for us. I forced a 3 hour schedule on her at first and we painfully worked up from there, but there was immediate improvement. I could function.
So it frustrates me when I see on the boards that people complain about their babies waking up twice a night, or every 3 hours. Whatever, wieners. Try going weeks of getting your sleep in one two-hour burst a night, followed by anything else you might get coming in 20-minute fragments and talk to me (and that original poster on Moxie) about sleep deprivation. It starts getting interesting in a scientific way. Your hearing gets weird. You stop being able to feel things with your fingers. Light looks funny. Your body starts shutting down.
And it kills me when people who have not dealt with these levels of sleep issues condemn crying it out. It is the only thing that works for some people. When the damn baby is crying all the time anyway, what's a few more minutes in the crib? If you could solve your kid's sleep problems by 'gentle' methods, freaking awesome for you. Just please don't tell a mom going through this that she needs to respond to her kid's every cry and that it will get better in time if she's gotten to the point I was at, because that is dangerous to both the mother and child. I imagine the same thing applies to colicky kids and most sources say that putting those guys down for a while and letting them wail after you've tried everything just so you can calm down is fine. Apparently that doesn't apply to babies who don't sleep, even though the same stress levels may be there.
End rant. Anyway, Soji has proven easier so far, and I'm hoping that means that the 4-month mark may not be as hellacious as Gwen's was. If it is, I'm getting the operation to ensure I never go through it again.
http://www.askmoxie.org/2007/12/samantha-needs.html#comments
That poor mom. I know how she feels, I really really do.
Having Gwen as my first has given me some sort-of-PTSD symptoms. Or at least, I have a lot of fear and dread to work through with this new baby. The labor was the first thing- towards the end of my pregnancy I was starting to panic thinking about it. Her labor was so long and so brutal and it was just horrible. I didn't realize how traumatized I was about it until I was going into it again. But Soji's super short 4.5 hour labor was obviously so much better.
The next thing, and the one that really scares me more than the labor did, is the sleep regression that happens at 4 months. I'm terrified of it. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. It started the day after my birthday with Gwen and went on and on and on. I felt physically ill from no sleep. She never napped; she only slept 45 minutes at a time a night and needed endless soothing. I got a referral from my community for a grandma to come and watch her for a couple of hours twice a week or so for cheap and would go upstairs and put a pillow on my head to shut out the screaming and fall off a cliff into sleep so deep it felt like I was dying. I read all the books. I tried all the suggestions. Daytime and nighttime schedules, charts, propping up the mattress, co-sleeping, white noise, music, loveys, having someone else soothe her, trying to get her to take pacifiers or bottles or anything to give me a break and let me sleep more than 20 minutes at a time. Finally I did the cry it out method, because it had come down to either that or weaning her onto formula. I couldn't take it anymore. I was broken.
Crying it out worked for us. I forced a 3 hour schedule on her at first and we painfully worked up from there, but there was immediate improvement. I could function.
So it frustrates me when I see on the boards that people complain about their babies waking up twice a night, or every 3 hours. Whatever, wieners. Try going weeks of getting your sleep in one two-hour burst a night, followed by anything else you might get coming in 20-minute fragments and talk to me (and that original poster on Moxie) about sleep deprivation. It starts getting interesting in a scientific way. Your hearing gets weird. You stop being able to feel things with your fingers. Light looks funny. Your body starts shutting down.
And it kills me when people who have not dealt with these levels of sleep issues condemn crying it out. It is the only thing that works for some people. When the damn baby is crying all the time anyway, what's a few more minutes in the crib? If you could solve your kid's sleep problems by 'gentle' methods, freaking awesome for you. Just please don't tell a mom going through this that she needs to respond to her kid's every cry and that it will get better in time if she's gotten to the point I was at, because that is dangerous to both the mother and child. I imagine the same thing applies to colicky kids and most sources say that putting those guys down for a while and letting them wail after you've tried everything just so you can calm down is fine. Apparently that doesn't apply to babies who don't sleep, even though the same stress levels may be there.
End rant. Anyway, Soji has proven easier so far, and I'm hoping that means that the 4-month mark may not be as hellacious as Gwen's was. If it is, I'm getting the operation to ensure I never go through it again.