juthwara

We're fighting the good fight at our house at the moment.

It's hard, sometimes, adjusting from the newborn who is all about needs that have to be fulfilled, to the older baby with wants that you might have to think about before you fulfill them. Overall, K is an extraordinarily mellow and undemanding baby. But the sleep issues... oy. Nighttime is fine, with only one or two wakeups to nurse and conk out again, but the naps are impossible. In the sling, with a parental finger to suck on, thank you very much, and don't think you can put me down just because I'm asleep, because I might wake up a little and need to suck again. I was having some luck putting her in the cradle for a while, but after a couple days of abbreviated naps, I desperately needed her to get more sleep and put her back in the sling for a while. The thing is, she doesn't need these things to get to sleep, she just wants them. And while I hate to deny her, she's not really getting quality sleep while being worn by us any more - she doesn't sleep as soundly as she did as a newborn, so our moving around disturbs her. More importantly, I realized that by continuing to put her to sleep this way, we've created a baby who won't go to sleep for anyone else. In addition to the daycare discussions, we've had radical thoughts of perhaps hiring a babysitter so we can go see the new Harry Potter movie (daycare, now babysitters - obviously I've grown bored of this whole having a baby lark, and intend to pay others to raise my child. All I need to do now is hire a wetnurse, and I can spend my days whooping it up, downing raw tofu with wild abandon). But no ones's best interests will be served if we come home to a miserable baby who wouldn't nap. So we need to change our approach to sleep.

Looking at the problem, it seems like the finger-sucking is both the most intractable problem, and the most easily solved. She's old enough to self-soothe by sucking her own fingers; I've seen her do it. Sometimes, she'll even try to insert her own fingers around ours. It's fairly clear that letting her suck our fingers is interfering with her developing the skills she needs to comfort herself, so this has to stop. So today, I did. I walked her and rocked her in the sling, sang to her and patted her. I offered her a pacifier and guided her fingers to her mouth. But I didn't let her suck my fingers.

Quite frankly, it's been an ordeal. She's definitely not happy with the new arrangement. But she has gone to sleep eventually, and we're making progress. Going to sleep for the night, she was fussing, but also sucking on her own fingers. Hopefully, this will lead to her being able to put herself back to sleep when she rouses wanting to suck. And once we've got this down, it will probably be pretty easy to make the transition to getting her to nap in the cradle after being cuddled into sleepiness in the sling.

I feel like an utter ogre, holding her and listening to her cry but not giving her what would make it stop. But we need to do this. She's not a tiny baby any more, and the way we did things then clearly isn't working now, for us or for her. So we're figuring out a new way. It just involves a lot of growing pains.