October 24, 2006

My first (but surely not last) experience feeling like a mean mommy

The last two nights, Sam has been super-fussy at bedtime. He has not really wanted to be held and was wiggling about, and last night we finally got him to go to sleep by lying down in our bed with him. Tonight both of us were getting frustrated because he was so tired and would not go to sleep. So... we finally tried just letting him cry it out. We haven't done it before. He pretty much falls asleep in one of our arms (often drinking a bottle) every night. Since I'm a stay at home mom and Justin works at home, we don't have as much of a need for a schedule, so it hasn't been a problem. At our last pedi appt, the doctor suggested it might be time to try and start teaching him how to go to sleep on his own, but we didn't really see a need.

Anyhow, tonight after holding him for 20 min and starting to get frustrated, I just put him down in his crib and walked away. I went into the other room and started working on balancing my bank acct. He didn't cry for a few min, then started to cry. I put him down around 10:17 and he started crying at 10:19. He finally stopped and fell asleep between 10:40 and 10:45. I felt bad just letting him cry, but I don't want to fight with him to make him go to bed. It is hard though. I guess this is just the beginning of many experiences that I'll have feeling like a mean mommy. At least there are lots of other times when I get to feel like a really good one.

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