We have spoiled Evan too much ever since he got sick about a month ago, he has gotten used to being picked up and held whenever he made some crying sounds. In recent days he has been waking up at least 3 times at night from when he is first put to sleep at about 9pm. He would wake up around 1 am, 5 am, and then again at 6 or 7 am. With each of these instances, he would cry incessantly whether he was hungry or not, wet or not. And the only way to calm him down and put him back to sleep is by feeding him some milk. At his age (6.5 months), he should be sleeping through the night already. He was able to sleep for 6-7 hrs at a stretch before, but now, it's no more than 3-4, sometimes even less. Last night after his bath, he should've fallen asleep very quickly. Instead, he started crying and reaching out with his hands to be held. I carried him around the house a bit to calm him down. He rubbed his eyes again, clearly very sleepy. I put him in the crib again and for a few seconds, he sucked on his thumb and appeared on his way to dream world, but then just as quickly, he started crying and reaching out to be held.
I admit I got rather angry, not necessarily at Evan, but at the situation itself. We had mis-trained him and now are paying the heavy price. Neither he nor us are getting much sleep lately as he is waking up 3 times a night and we're obviously getting up with him in order to try to calm him down. Last night, I snapped and decided that we have to stop spoiling him and train him again to sleep through the night. Or more appropriately - train him to fall asleep by himself, without a feeding and without being picked up. The plan was to feed and change him at 1am, then when he wakes up again around 5am, make sure he's not lacking anything, then let him fall back asleep by himself, even if he starts crying and crying a lot.
He woke up just short of 1am and I changed and fed him about 5 oz of milk/formula mix. He then woke up at 3:30 am, well before the 5am that I initially expected. We let him know we were around, but did not pick him up. He started crying, obviously unused to not being picked up whenever he woke up. We let him continue to cry and his cries escalated louder and louder. It was very difficult to hear his cries and not pick him up, but if we didn't teach him to sleep by himself, we'll never get any sleep ourselves, and he'll always be dependent on us whenever he woke up. We had to stay strong.... His cries turned intermittent at about 4:00 am, half hour since he woke. But then by 4:10, he was again crying loudly even though his eyes were shut and he was clearly sleepy. I changed his diapers this time, he was not happy at all. After I changed him (only 25% wet) and put him back into the crib, I expected that he would again start crying nonstop. And for a few minutes, he did. He really wanted to be picked up and held despite being really sleepy. And I was determined not to keep that habit going, and so had to watch him cry... After a few minutes, he calmed down, or probably more likely just got too tired from all the crying, and finally started to fall asleep. He finally fell asleep just before 4:30 am, almost a full hour after waking up initially. It was hard for all of us. Now the question was when he was going to wake next and what we should do then.
He woke up at 6:15 am and started to cry, although not as loudly as earlier, probably because he was so tired from the earlier crying. He had gone about 5.25 hours without milk, about an hour longer than the last couple of weeks. It may not be much, and while this included an hour of crying, it is a necessary first step to getting back ontrack to overnight sleeping. From all our conversations with various pediatricians, it is absolutely ok to let the baby cry in order to train the baby to sleep longer. Of course one must first make sure that the baby isn't uncomfortable otherwise - i.e. tight or wet/dirty diapers, too warm/hot, etc. They warned that it would be harder on us than on the baby, as it would be difficult to hear the baby cry without wanting to pick him up. But if we didn't train him early, we would have a difficult baby to deal with, and we wont get much sleep. This has become reality, unfortunately, and I just hope it's not too late to re-train Evan in earnest again.
I fed him at about 6:25 am, about 4 oz. After the meal, I put him in the crib, thinking that he would almost immediately fall asleep. He did, and didn't. He did fall asleep almost rightaway, but then started crying softly again a few minutes later. I thought 'oh no... here we go again'... I went into his room and closed the shades and didn't pick him up, readying myself for another bout of crying. But he didn't continue to cry, he fell asleep almost rightaway. By the time I left at about 7:45, he was still asleep. But he woke up some 15 minutes later and was tired and grumpy. Sigh... I hope this will be ok... I hope he doesn't grow up thinking that I was so mean with him...
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