Sleep Training, Take 2

Sigh...I actually broke down and cried in front of Brian this morning as I was holding the baby and rocking back and forth on my knees around 6:30 this morning. Rhys has been sleeping very poorly ever since I have been back to exclusively taking care of Rhys. I think back to the days when Rhys would sleep 4 or 5 hours on his own. These days he sleeps 2-3 hours when I first put him down for bed, but afterwards, he wakes up every hour pretty much the rest of the evening. I take him to bed with me around 1 or 2 am when Brian finally stops playing video games and gets into bed. We fall back asleep just fine after the move to our bed, but Rhys wakes up quite frequently because he is either in need of my boob or that the bed is too small for him to really move around in. He gets stuck in a position that has become uncomfortable and when he tries to move, he realizes that there isn't that much room to move. I've actually fallen off of the bed because Rhys basically rolled his way to the edge of the bed and I try to make room for him to roll as he pleases so he would go back to sleep. I fold up in these weird positions and I wake up with such a soreness in my ribs of all places.

This morning was not any different from other nights, but I think I was at my last straw. I think I may have scared Brian a little with my crying in the morning cuz he called around 2pm today to check up on me. So, I bought the Cry It Out book by Dr. Ferber. It isn't what you think though. It is not put your baby in the crib and leave and not come back til the morning. It's a progressive wait approach where you wait progressively longer intervals before you go in and check on your baby to reassure him that I am still near and reassure myself that he is okay. I waited 2 minutes, then checked up on him. He cried to be held and taken out of the crib, but I laid him down instead and told him "night night". He did NOT like that. He cried even louder and was not going to be consoled by my rubbing his back and patting his butt. I did that for about a minute and then I slipped out of his view and waited for 3 minutes this time. It was so hard watching him cry and look around for me and try to climb the bars of the crib. When I went back to check on him, he actually got his little self up to a standing position and wailed for me to pick him up. I rubbed his back and then put him back down in his crib and continued to listen to an even louder protest from him. I waited another 4 minutes and then...he kinda looked like he was gonna go to sleep, but after about 20 seconds, he woke back up and cried even more furiously because he realized that he was alone. After another 4 minutes, I went to check up on him and reassured him that I was not totally gone. Finally after about 15 or so minutes of crying...he went to sleep on his own. I waited another few minutes to make sure that he was really going to stay asleep and then walked to the kitchen to get some water and repeated over and over that I was sorry I had to do this to him. Hopefully he will get used to this without too much trouble.

I think my biggest battle will be when he wakes up again and I have to do this all over again...


Wish me luck.

Evenings to myself...and Brian

I am starting to actually enjoy some time to myself in the evenings. Rhys has been getting a little bit better at sleeping on his own these last few days. Last night he slept for 3 hours straight and that gave me time to eat dinner with Brian, take a shower, enjoy some coffee and some Korean television. I think he was sleeping well when I was in LA with him, but back then I was too busy trying to get some studying done that I wasn't able to enjoy this free time that I had. But I should probably be using this time to catch up on sleep instead of wasting time going on the internet. But I love this time to myself since I am basically stuck to a baby during the day....or more that the baby is stuck to me. He is crawling these days and most of the time, he is crawling to me. Crawling on me like I am some mountain he needs to get to the top of....haha my boobs are the mountains that he needs to get to...haha.

Today was actually not a great day for Rhys. I was trying to read him the Go the F**k to sleep book this morning and he ended up falling on one of the corners of the book and put a gash right under his right eye. I felt so bad! He cried like when he got his immunization shots. I think I say "I'm so sorry Rhys" about 100 times as I cleaned his wound and put some A&D on it. I had planned on going to Target today, but after this accident, I seriously started rethinking my plans. I didn't want other people thinking that I did this to my kid on purpose. The wound made kind of an exclamation mark in red so he almost looked like a clown from afar with a teardrop under his eye. I decided to still go to Target because I didn't do anything that I was ashamed of...I just felt bad that it happened. Right when I get in, I overhear a man walking with his family saying something about the status of Rhys' face. I try and ignore it and carry on with Rhys in the ergo. We look at all of the aisles and end up at the toy aisle where I picked up two toys for him. I picked up a remote control and a Lion King toy push car-ish type thingy. He definitely likes the remote control, but I'm not sure about the other toy. We'll see. On my way out, I picked up a Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino for 50% off because it was a Frappucino happy hour! Yay! Anyways...I think I drank that drink in like 10 minutes because I was done by the time I got back home.

The house smelled so yummy because I had a pork roast slowly cooking in the crockpot. MMMMmmmmm. The roast just melted in my mouth cuz I had it in there for 8 hours. Minimal work for me, but I get such wonderful outcomes. Love the crockpot!

I'm watching Rhys sleeping on the monitor and he is starting to move around. I partly think it is cuz he is cold. I think I'll go in and put a blanket on him or something. Here is a pic of him kinda curling up a bit...