My daughter was a wonderful sleeper, up until shortly after she hit 4 months. We figure she had a bit of constipation, so she would wake up with the effort of trying to excrete. Then she had another UTI (actually, she might have had the UTI the whole time), and then she had surgery. Whew. It's been interesting.
Lately, though, she's been even worse than she was the past month and a half. I thought maybe all my bad sleep-training habits had finally caught up with me, but when I thought I'd start letting her cry a little, I noticed it got worse. Her cries, to me, sounded so much like pain. And I thought she was in pain.
Tonight, my husband finally noticed it too. I wasn't making it up! When he went to rub a little vaseline on where her ureter comes out (where she had her surgery), he noticed it looked a little red. We're going to call on Monday to see what we can or should do about it. Poor little girl. I thought I noticed her crying a few days ago when the ureter was draining (quick anatomy review - the ureter is the tube from which the kidney drains into the bladder. Baby's got two - one wasn't draining hardly at all, so they moved it out to the skin. Weird, I know), and I think she even seemed to flinch when I went to rub vaseline on it once. The only trouble is that she doesn't do it every time - I see the ureter drain and she's just doing her thing. But it did look a little red to me last night. Maybe it's swollen? I don't know.
Anyway. It makes me feel a little better as a mother that I haven't simply failed at helping my baby to sleep. I still have some work to do in the sleep training department, but I feel somewhat justified in my actions for now. Who's going to turn away a baby in pain? Not me, that's for sure. I love my little girl. Even if she does persistently scream every two hours or so.
(Confession: I've taken to brief periods of co-sleeping with the little girl because I'm too tired to stay up with her until she won't scream when I put her down. Not the best three-hour stretches of my life, but possibly better than the less-than-two I've been getting.)
My son has seemed to hate sleep from the very beginning (I've also done some co-sleeping because I was desperate to get some rest). We're still up until 4:00am on a consistent basis, but I don't really like the idea of letting him "cry it out" - at least not yet. What are your thoughts on sleep training?
ReplyDeleteShe used to sleep so well... and I'm getting tired enough that I think I might go over to the library today and get Ferber's "cry it out" book. I looked up a little on it and it doesn't sound too horrible, just gradually getting the child used to falling asleep on their own. If I try it out, I'll be sure to let you know. Seriously, she's waking up almost every hour, and it's starting to make us get a little frustrated with her. I figure letting her cry a little longer every night is probably better than getting frustrated throughout the day.
ReplyDeleteYes, please let me know! I've read some about the Ferber method, and am thinking about trying it in the future (I think three months is still a little too young).
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