One of the things that irritates me is when people come to conclusions about all children everywhere based on their one child. I was guilty of this too, in fact. I was a hardcore “Attachment Parent” with Kate, especially when it came to sleep. She needed<\/i> me and for close to a year I could barely sneak away after nursing her to sleep. I co-slept all night. I took naps with her. I wore her everywhere and she napped on me or wherever we were. She would not sleep in any swing, bouncer, pack’n’play, crib or any other device that did not have the name of MAMA<\/i>. (Okay, that’s a lie… she would sleep on daddy. Or anyone, really, as long as she had warm arms.) I never planned to do it that way. We had a swing, a cosleeper, a crib. I had envisioned putting my baby to sleep in her bed. We started out doing just that, in fact. It was a week in when she informed me that wasn’t going to work for her and it didn’t again for a long time.<\/p>\n
And the thing is, even though I was doing what my child needed and listening to my instincts and just being the Mama, sometimes I wondered if I was doing something wrong. All these articles out there, all this opinion about sleep and just having to “tough it out” and “train them.” We tried a few times… it failed spectacularly. Kate had not read those articles. A big part of me couldn’t understand how anyone got their baby to sleep on their own. Were they torturing their children?? It certainly felt like torture when we tried it. Like every fiber of her being was screaming in fear of being left alone forever, that the ground was going to swallow her whole and spit her out into outer space. I tried to have perspective, I tried to take a step back, and I certainly never said anything to anyone… but I wondered. What were people doing to their children? Clearly forcing them to sleep alone was horrible.<\/p>\n
Enter Ember. We set up the cosleeper and the swing again, but I rolled my eyes at them. I knew what a baby needed. I was ready. And she… didn’t need any of it. She sleeps beautifully in the swing. She’ll sleep in the middle of my bed when I put her down, all splayed out and apparently happy. In fact I discovered that she sleeps better for naps if I put her down in a different room! I now put her in the rock’n’play or on my bed and leave her there. At night I put her in the cosleeper. Okay, yes, she does end up sleeping beside me after she nurses a few times, but that’s mostly because I’m lazy. I could move her back and she’d be fine. I get up in the morning and she continues sleeping.<\/p>\n
She’s going through a little rough patch, she’s a bit cranky and fighting naps. What Kate needed during those times was extra cuddles, holding, bouncing. I tried that with Ember and she still wouldn’t sleep. What does<\/i> work? Leaving her. Contrary to all my expectations, all my learning from my first child, all my previous beliefs as a parent… if I leave her in her swing while she grumbles and whines and squawks, if she is tired and needs a nap she will fall asleep.. and sleep well. Now of course I do not leave her screaming and sobbing hysterically, that’s different. But I didn’t even have a concept<\/i> for this. I really thought that people meant they would leave their baby to scream themselves hoarse until they fell asleep… because that’s how it was with Kate, that was the only other option.<\/p>\n
Ember certainly has a lot to teach me… humility being #1. Those rules that I built and used for Kate worked… for Kate. They do not necessarily apply to anyone else. Ember has a different set of rules. I realize now that you really can’t judge someone for what works for their child – you just don’t know.<\/p>\n
Also it occurs to me that Ember is probably the “normal” one. Kate was “special.” Good thing I had her first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the things that irritates me is when people come to conclusions about all children everywhere based on their one child. I was guilty of this too, in fact. I was a hardcore “Attachment Parent” with Kate, especially when it came to sleep. She needed me and for close to a year I could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[622],"tags":[623,475,165],"class_list":["post-4321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embers-first-year","tag-ember","tag-kate","tag-sleep"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4322,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4321\/revisions\/4322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}