April 04, 2006

One plus One Equals.... ELEVEN!


P1010114
Originally uploaded by billyjoebob.
You're eleven months old today, punkin. Looking at you heading off to daycare this morning, clad in your first ever flannel shirt and wearing shoes for the second full day, I'm ready to use words that I last used when speaking of Jerry Garcia. What a long, strange trip it's been.

In just these last weeks, I've begun to feel closer to you than ever before. My sense of being able to communicate with you grows every day, and the babblings that are coming from your mouth every second of every day are getting closer and closer to words.

We're sure that you're going to continue to surprise us, and that every day is going to continue to be an adventure. This next month running up to your first birthday will, I think, hold more than a few milestones for us, and I'm glad that we're going to have a chance to share them with you.

The sleep thing has popped up again, you've been delighting us this past week or so with consistent waking and screaming about every 2 hours until you get fed, but we're going to let it go until your mum has a day off work so that we can dedicate our full attention to what is known as the CIO method.

Crying It Out will be similar to things we've tried before, in fact I'm thinking it will be almost exactly the same, but I'm going to take my headphones home from work just in case it gets worse than it has been before. I know that there are people who say that leaving you to cry is Cruel and Unusual and that we're bad parents for doing it, but they, punkin, can stick it up their jumpers.



Love you.

4 comments:

Bente said...

We did the CIO method with Elli only I didn't realize it was a "method" at the time. To me it just seemed to be common sense that babies need to learn to sleep on their own.

By saying that I don't mean the other methods people use are done without common sense. I just feel I should add that after the chaos happening over at Dooce and Blurbomat. ;)

Mrs Pants said...

Ah yes, the internet is full of people with children that have never seen a TV set, never sampled a grain of sugar or a morsel of a fried chip and bottoms that have never been touched by anything but cloth nappies. Nappies no doubt not only made by the parent but also weaved and grown by them as well.

Unfortunately, since becoming a parent myself, I've found that some people will try to make you feel like an inferior parent. It's rife on the internet.

Pffft to them. They aren't the ones at your home raising your child.

Good luck. One day our children will realise just how wonderful sleep really is.

Kathy said...

Yeah, my God, hasn't the furore at Dooce been OTT? I think some people need to take a deep, deep breath, a big step back and listen to their own words objectively. Then they might actually hear how smug, self-righteous and frankly insensitive and simple-minded they sound.

Which is not to say that I don't think there is an alternative sleep-training method to CIO (there are several) or that everyone who chooses not to CIO is a fruitbat (we didn't, and I'm not ... at least I think I'm not). But the Attachment Parenting Hysterics bring me out in hives, the way they cast judgements around on other families' decisions. I mean, please, who ARE they to judge? Every situation, every family is different. Hell, every *child* within a family is different (we are using very different sleep strategies for our strong-willed bruiser no. 2 than we did for sensitive, delicate no. 1).

My view is that people should do their homework, read and ask around, talk carefully between the parents about what makes sense to them, what their limits are and what they feel the child will be most likely to respond to, then devise a strategy and STICK TO IT FOR A WHILE. My only strong opinion on this whole area frankly is that chopping, changing and inconsistency are a child's worst enemy when learning how to sleep.

CIO works fine for some families, controlled comforting works fine for others, PUPD works for others, sleep-association works for others, breastfeeding-on-demand-in-the-family-bed works for others. We did a combination of PUPD (from the Baby Whisperer) and very limited (3 min) controlled comforting for sensitive, shy no. 1, and it worked a treat. Assertive, mischievous no. 2 played us like violins when we attempted the same strategy, so we moved to "classic" controlled comforting - longer intervals of crying (5-8 mins) followed by a brief verbal-only comfort - pretty damn quickly, and that works for her.

Good luck with Bram, he will be fine and so will you (although the experience itself mayn't be pleasant, but not all of parenting is, is it). He is a dear litle boy and will be EVEN DEARER when he lets you get some much-needed rest!

Mrs Pants said...

AHH I wrote weaved! Oh well, being sleep deprived is very much the norm in this household too.