Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Day 89: Bedtime disaster

I am writing this post a little late, but it's about April 19, which was the biggest bedtime disaster since I began this blog.

Honestly, I'm not sure what happened. Yes, I got Mari to bed a little later than usual, but by just 10 minutes. This has happened before with no real consequence. She napped fairly well during the day. I knew she was getting tired at night, but Jon had a lot on his mind and I spent a bit of extra time talking to him after dinner. I then performed the usual bedtime routine and everything seemed fine. I put her down at 7:40. She was starting to fuss a bit, but I expected she'd be able to fall asleep. Instead, a few minutes after I left the room, she started screaming at the top of her lungs.

She was so upset, none of the usual tricks (rocking, bouncing, singing, etc.) made one iota of difference. She wouldn't nurse anymore; she'd just eaten. She has seldom cried quite so hard or so loudly. In desperation I let her get up for a little while to try to "reset" her. She watched her mobile (still hung over the now-unused co-sleeper), which she likes, then I turned the light on in her room and read her one more story. Then I tried to put her down again. As soon as her butt hit the mattress, she started screaming again, if anything even louder than before.

I picked her up right away. I was prepared to abandon my usual rules about having her fall asleep on her own. I just wanted her to calm down. But no matter what I did, she wouldn't calm down again. She didn't even seem to notice I was there. She screamed until I thought she'd lose her voice, then she screamed some more. I alternated between trying to soothe her and leaving her for a few minutes at a time in the hope she'd cry herself to sleep, even though I don't really believe in that method. Neither worked. Finally, in large part for the sake of my own sanity, I just left her and closed the door to my own room. I thought I'd give her 15 minutes to cry, but at the 15-minute mark, her cries FINALLY started to peter out, though she kept them up weakly for a further 10 minutes or so. She didn't fall asleep until nearly 9 PM.

Now I feel bad for having left her to cry it out because it wasn't planned. As I've stated before, I don't believe Mari needs to "cry it out." I tried it intentionally once. It didn't work well then and the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became with the idea. I don't want her to cry it out again. But I didn't know what else to do with a baby who wasn't responding to any of my soothing efforts at all. What would you do in this situation?

4 comments:

  1. Is she sick? Isaac was pulling on my hair yesterday and I took it out of his hand and said, "Stop please, no pulling hair" in a very nice tone of voice, with a smile! and his face crumpled and he started to wail, and then every time I'd look at him again he'd go off. And then he woke up at 1:30 a.m. with a fever and conjunctivitis.

    To answer your question, I would have set her down too, because I would have needed a few minutes to myself, and I would have waited until I felt better to come back and try again. I find that hard to do (harder with Caleb than with Isaac, because Isaac has always wanted to be left alone to sleep), but I have also run out of patience and yelled, and that feels worse to me than listening to them cry for a few minutes, and it scares them too. So you did what I would have done, too.

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  2. I don't think she's sick. She may have been teething. I have found lately that she's doing an awful lot of finger-gnawing, particularly concentrating on the front part of her upper gums, which are a bit swollen, though I don't think teeth are quite ready to break through. It's hard to tell, though, when she's teething and when she's just overtired. When I think about it, she was fussier than usual for weeks before her first teeth broke through on the bottom, but it was on and off, not a steady thing.

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  3. Karen: first I want to say that you did a great job. It sounds like you tried everything, including lots of kinds of comforting, and in the end what you did allowed you a break and allowed Mari to get to sleep. Ideal? No. But who has an ideal kid? You managed a very challenging situation in a way that was safe for both of you. Good for you. I hope it never happens again.

    If it did, the only thing I can think of to try that I didn't see here is giving her some Motrin. That might not work if she's screaming and screaming; Jake will sometimes calm down long enough to swallow if I put a medicine dropper in his mouth, but you'd have to use your own judgment about whether it seemed safe. I don't believe in overmedicating kids either, but I also don't see anything wrong with giving them a safe, tested painkiller if they're hurting and can't be distracted in another way.

    Go you!

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  4. Thanks, Nicole. I did think about giving her Motrin, but I wasn't sure if it was her teeth hurting her or not. How do you tell? For Mari, teething pain seems to be very much on and off, so I can never tell if it's her teeth or just fatigue.

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