Lesson #16 Cry baby

Lesson 16: If you're not ready to let your baby cry it out, don't let them cry for too long!!!  Oh my goodness, that was so frustrating.  I messed up big time, but I guess that's gonna happen now and then : /

I decided to swaddle Caleb before our bedtime bottle because a) he hasn't allowed me to swaddle him afterward, thus making us either hold him or put him in the swing until the dream feed and b) he was super fussy right before (not colicky, just fussy) and I knew he was gonna be tired during the feed, so I thought this might give us a chance to actually put him to bed rather than having him sleep in the living room.

I was right, he started dozing off during the bottle.  Once he finished it, he woke up and was acting hungry so I  put some more in and fed him the rest and then he fell asleep in my arms.  So, I stood up and carried him to his crib.  No harm done, right? 
Wrong.  This boy HATES sleeping in his crib before 11pm! About thirty seconds later he started his tired cry.  I thought that maybe he would conk out after just a bit of this cuz he was so tired and his cry was showing it, but damnit I knew better.  I know that he's an escalator, not a soother (not yet at least...hopefully he'll self soothe at some point).  But I wasn't thinking and left him to cry.  After five minutes I decided to go try and calm him down without picking him up.  Didn't work...but at this point I felt like if I had started it, it would be worse to pick him up because he would learn that screaming = picked up out of the crib. FAIL.  He's too little, I don't kow what I was thinking.  I waited another four minutes and went back in, stayed in there with my hand on his tummy for about three minutes, came out, paced for maybe a minute, and then couldn't do it anymore.  UGH. I'm so mad at myself.  I should have just picked him up after a couple of minutes.  Now he's cried for fifteen minutes or so and then was picked up, unswaddled (the only way I could get him to calm down), given a binky, and rocked to sleep.

Fail. Fail. Fail.

I ended up putting him back in his crib with his binky knowing that I would pick him up as soon as he starts crying again.  He hasn't yet, but it's only because he hasn't woken up.  As soon as he does, game over I'm sure. And even if he doesn't wake up until the dream feed, it still was me putting him down asleep and I just don't know if that's a good thing.  I can't possibly rock these babies to sleep each time, it's logistically impossible.  So if they get reliant on that, we're gonna have a lot more crying.

Ok, anyway, I think I jinxed myself yesterday by typing that sleeping was going better.  He was up a lot last night until I finally fed him again at 11pm.  Then he woke up at 4am yelling and wouldn't go back to sleep.  I put a binky in his mouth and he quieted down for a few minutes, then started again.  This woke up Grace who started crying hard and I had to give her a binky, too.  She must have dropped it about 15 minutes later and started crying again.  This went on and on...I didn't get to go back to sleep because at 5:15 Grace didn't want the binky anymore so I had to feed her and then him and then pump.  I finally got back to bed around 7:45 and then Grace woke up at 8:30.

Oh, and I was up until 12:30 last night pumping (I got my blogging done while I was pumping) because I had a clogged duct that wouldn't go away, requiring me to pump on and off for an hour (or there would be no sleeping, it was so painful). 

Ben came home for lunch so I could go take a quick nap cuz I was exhausted and frustrated...he's such a champion.

Well, they're both crying now. Have to go, here's Gracie playing with her new So.phie the Gir.affe!

Love the little tray for the bumbo!