Growing Pains

Our first days at daycare aren't going so well.  Calvin doesn't know how to fall asleep on his own and I don't think the teachers have the time to work with him on it.  When I look at the sheet of his activities I see sporadic sleeping that adds up to no more than an hour.  The result is that I bring home an exhausted baby. He's happy to see us, but too tired to enjoy any of our typical evening activities.  No song time, no massage, no books.  Just eating and to bed.

It could just be that he hasn't had time to adjust to his new surroundings, but I think the fault falls more with me.  I have been verbal about not wanting Calvin to cry.  The cry it out method is inconsistent with my parenting philosophy.  Despite this, I've gotten really good at putting Calvin to bed at night, but only as a human pacifier.  Or if it's dad's turn, it's the bouncy seat of sleep.  and in either case it's 30, 45, 60 minutes of our evenings (middle of the night) spent in a dark baby room.

So if the daycare people aren't going to do the hard parenting jobs for me, I guess I have to. Calvin came home exhausted and cranky and ready for bed an hour before bedtime.  Since I decided my method of putting him to sleep (pleasant as he found it) wasn't doing him any favors, I tried a different approach.

First I tried my touchy feely attachment parenting approach.  Feeding, rocking, substitute pacifier, nurse some more, butt patting, substitute pacifier,  rocking and more butt patting.  It didn't work.

Then I tried the proven and popular method.  I put Calvin in his crib, gave him a kiss goodnight and patted his butt one last time.  Then *gasp* left.  He *gasp, gasp* cried.  But over all it only took two 5 minute sessions and he was asleep.  While it broke my heart and made me cry too, you can't argue with success.  It's the start of what I hope will be nights with less and less crying and hopefully what he learns at night will help him during the day.

Nothing has ever brought me more joy than the sound of this guy's giggle