Sleep Training Wimp

So I have a confession to make. My almost one year old baby does not sleep through the night. He wakes crying 2-3 times a night and I grudgingly make my way down the hall and nurse him back to sleep. He does not nap willingly and in fact must be nursed to sleep on my queen sized bed. If I try to get up after he falls asleep or even detach his greedy little mouth from my breast he will wake, sit up, scream and refuse to go back to sleep. I don't like to admit any of this and try not to bring up the topic of sleep, although after a year of not sleeping I suspect the bags under my eyes and a tendency to sound like George W might be tipping people off to the fact that I have failed at teaching my child to sleep. (Today I told an acquaintance that I was afraid of Baby M getting "strampled" on the playground, my own little Bushism combining "stampeded" and "trampled").

It's not that I don't know what needs to be done; I've read plenty of sleep books and gotten all sorts of advice from well meaning friends and strangers. Part of the problem is that there is always a good reason to postpone the sleep training-- we're leaving on a trip, or just got back from a trip or Baby M is sick or teething, etc. etc. Another part of the problem is that Baby M is a particularly stubborn baby who really doesn't like the idea of going to sleep. And the final part of the problem is that I am a wimp who can't let my baby cry. Yes I have read The No Cry Sleep Solution and the Baby Whisperer's "Pick Up Put Down" method and they do not work for us. Baby M does not care if I am in the room, rubbing his back or singing him a lullaby, he will jump up and down shaking his crib rail and screaming until he chokes. Perhaps the old PUPD method would have worked when Baby M was smaller, but I cannot repeatedly lift a 23 lb baby up and down without throwing my back out. I really wanted to believe Jodi Mindell's claim that after breaking the nurse to sleep connection my baby would be sleeping through the night within 2 weeks, but after months of reading Goodnight Moon and putting my baby into the crib awake, he still is up a few hours after he goes to sleep. So I'm left with Weissbluth's "Extinction / Graduated Extinction" or the Sleepeasy Solution both of which require some crying.

I know a bit of crying is not going to hurt Baby M, and if it helps all of us get some sleep it may be worth it. I admit that I am more often grouchy and short tempered because I am tired. And since I have to nap with Baby M that means when he is awake I spend time doing chores instead of interacting with him. As plenty of people have pointed out he used to cry when I put him in his carseat and I still just gave him a kiss, turned up the radio and went on my way. But somehow the idea of him alone in the dark, crying out for me and not getting an answer just kills me. I remember being a young child and calling out for my mother, if she hadn't come I would have been devastated. Plus, as someone who was prone to histrionics as a teenager I know how lousy you feel after sobbing uncontrollably for an hour-- puffy eyes, snotty nose, your whole face hurts.

But even with these mixed feelings, every few weeks I tell my husband, "okay, this weekend we're doing sleep training" but every week I wimp out. I wonder what this means for my parenting skills? Am I already a bad parent? Am I going to be one of those mothers who can't discipline her kid? Am I going to end up with a bratty Baby M? I mean if I can't teach my baby to sleep, which is a biological imperative, how am I ever going teach him to share on the playground or say thank you or stand up for the funny looking weird kid that everyone else teases?

Parasomnia and Nightmares

I am reading yet another sleep book (Sleeping Through the Night by Jodi Mindell). I know I keep saying that I need to quit reading these parenting books, but I just can't stop myself. This particular book is written by an associate director of a sleep disorders center and now I am convinced that Baby M has parasomnia.

Baby M has not been sleeping for more than 2 or 3 hours at a time during the night so I've gotten into the habit of napping with him in the afternoon. He nearly always wakes up from his nap crying inconsolably, even when I am lying right there next to him. He doesn't seem to notice me when I pat his back, say his name or even pick him up. According to the book, this could be a case of Confusional Arousal, which is a mild form of parasomnia and apparently very common. The author's advice is to just leave him alone.

Initially I wondered if Baby M could be having nightmares. I can still recall my childhood nightmares and remember crying out for my parents in a panic. My parents generally found my nightmares hilarious, although to their credit, they saved their laughter for the following morning and did their best to offer comfort and a sympathetic ear in the middle of the night. However, I will always remember the night my mother couldn't stop giggling when I described the "sponge-nose bandit" nightmare. I dreamed that my brother had a kitchen sponge on his face where his nose should have been. An evil sponge salesman cut off my brother's sponge-nose so that he could sell it which resulted in my brother's death. Looking back I can see how a 4 year old tearfully explaining how her brother's nose was a highly sought after sponge is funny, but at the time my mother's laughter was the exactly the opposite of what I needed. I don't have too many items on my "Things my parents did that I'll never do" list because they were pretty good parents, but laughing at my child's nightmares is one of them.