So you probably read the title of this post and thought to yourself.."This is got to be about Casey crying out to God about something" right? Well I will be doing alot of crying out to God, but I have decided to take the dreaded step of...
Letting Joshua cry it out.
Let me give you a bit of history. Starting about 8 months Joshua got colds quite frequently, there for he wasn't sleeping that great thru the night. And when he wasn't dealing with a cold, he was cutting teeth. Needless to say there was a WHOLE lot of us going in there and comforting him, or bringing him to bed with us until he fell asleep, or me and John taking turns laying on the couch with him until he would fall asleep. But here it is, Joshua is now 14 months old and we are still having the night wakes. He will just scream and scream. Me and John evaluate the situation with questions like "Is it to cold in his room? Is it to hot in his room? Is he teething? No maybe he isn't feeling that great" And after about 5 minutes of crying, we go in there, pick him up, and as SOON as you walk out of the room with him he is silent. So that is a sure sign that nothing is wrong with him; we just have trained him. I hate it when you know that you have done something to cause your child to have a hard time. We have conditioned Joshua into thinking that if he wakes up during the night and puts up enough fight, that we will go in there and he can sleep with us, or we will cuddle with him as long as needed. This for me and John has left us tired and drained all day, every day. It's really not about our lack of sleep that I am doing this, but for the well being of my son! He has a big ole nice bed that is just his, and he is old enough.
Do you know how hard it is for me to let him cry, scream, and whimper? It is killing me right now as I type this post. Here it is, 2:34am, and I am on blogger writing a post. Joshua will sleep off and on for about a minute and then start crying again. I have decided that since it is my Spring Break, I will take the responsibility of sitting up in the Living room with the monitor on (just to make sure he doesn't throw up or kill himself in there) until he falls asleep. I want John to be able to function for work! I have read all over the internet that the reason he cries so much now is because of his age, and if I am persistant, and am strong willed in doing this that this won't last longer than a week! So I am venturing out on the crying out method! It's hard! WAY HARD.
But I am reminded that sometimes God has to let us cry it out too. He cannot always give us EVERYTHING we want. He has to sit back and say "no not yet", or just "no", and he has to watch us cry it out. I bet that it is hard for him to listen to us cry it out, but in the long run, he knows whats best for us. He knows that it will make us stronger if he lets us cry it out.
So... I am trying to be a great mother, and teach my child a small amount of independence. Can you pray for me over the next couple of nights??? Pray for my strength and indurance as I venture out on "Sleep Boot Camp"?? Pray that God would come to me in this time and comfort me and let me know that I am doing what is best for Joshua, and that it will work! Joshua will begin to sleep thru the night and be able to soothe himself back to sleep!
I will update!
1 comment:
How did this end up going? We started letting Will cry it out at 6 months (maybe?) and then again when he was a year old when we started making him take naps in his crib (he napped in his swing before that). It is really hard those first couple of times, but it worked really well for us. Every now and then he will get "off" again...like if we put him to bed too late or if we let him get in bed with us the night before because he wasn't feeling well. When we moved he was really off. But we always go back to letting him cry and it usually only takes a night or two to remember how to go to sleep on his own...and the crying doesn't last near as long (maybe 10 minutes). Typically, I go in his room every 5 minutes until he is quiet, but I don't touch him or really even look him in the eye...I just tell him it's night night time (and usually have to pick his pacifier up off the ground that he's thrown out of his crib). Most nights he goes to bed wide awake, tells us "night night" and we don't hear a peep until 12 hours later. Anyway, I hope it went well and he is going to bed like a champ now...I just thought I would share our experience with it.
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