Sleep Sense

Hey guys,

Well, we're hanging at around 100 days home. Jude-o is doing great in every aspect. Seriously, he's an angel baby. I think God had mercy on me (not a baby gal, really) and gave me a gem. There was one little area that he required a little extra attention. Ok, ALOT. And it wasn't so little, it was sort of gigantic. Sleep, my friends.

When he first came home it was a pleasure to get up with him once or twice to rock him. Then the weeks went on and I started getting really tired. And then the months went on and I got delirious. And also quite cranky. And so was Jude. And that's not exactly conducive to bonding during the day. Once or twice was turning into 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 times a night sometimes. He basically settled on sleeping in my arms while I was awake. That wasn't really going to work out, so I got desperate and hit up all my adoptive moms for advice and insight.

I found alot of you are continuing to get up a million times a night. And some are sleeping just fine. But for those of us not blessed with a good sleeper, what's a mom to do? With birth babies, you generally have two options (basically): cry it out or live with it. With adoptive children, cry it out is super frowned upon. Given that our kids have experienced unexpected loss of caregivers, we wouldn't want them to think that that was what could be happening. It's perfectly understandable and I couldn't bear to try it with Jude not knowing what he's experienced before us. BUT I couldn't go on holding him all night either. We even got a giant co-sleeper thinking maybe that would work and we could live with it, but no. He wouldn't let that fly.

Well, one of our mamas, Brianna, turned me on to Sleep Sense as it had worked with them and Azzie. You guys, it worked like a charm for us! It's basically 'cry it out' but you're in the room with them, so there's no fear of abandonment, you're right there. The premise is to take away sleep crutches that help the baby fall asleep so he can do it on his own. For Jude, he wanted a bottle and rocking. Well, a one year old certainly doesn't need any bottles at night, let alone multiple! So anyway, nights 1-3 we sat by his crib, right beside it. He cried, but it wasn't the big deal freak out cry. More like a whine. He did that for 40 minutes, then slept until 3 am. Brandon went in there and slept on the floor by him and he again put himself back to bed. Now we're a week into it and he's slept solo all night long 3 of those nights. 3 nights of solid sleep! Like 12 hours!!! And he only whines for like 2-3 minutes. It's so wonderful!!! Anyway, if you find yourself desperate some day (maybe today) I totally recommend Sleep Sense.

I know it seems dreadful to listen to the cry, but for us it wasn't so bad at all. The cry was not panicked, at first it was confused. But then he knew what to expect and it's dwindled to a little nothing. I read a book and have some tea. It's actually kind of nice. If you have any questions, shoot me an email at b.cupitt(at)yahoo(dot)com.