Sleep Training - Yes or No?

Our little girl is almost five months old, and we still haven't done any kind of sleep training. Despite the fact that we probably spend more time talking about how to get our daughter to sleep than we do discussing any other topic, neither of us has been able to come up with or find a sleep plan that we feel comfortable with.

I refuse to let my little girl "cry it out." I just won't do it. She looks and sounds terrified when she wakes up alone in her crib, and there is no way I am going to leave her there scared and lonely when one of us could pick her up and comfort her. And her dad is an even bigger softy than I am. He usually has her out of the crib already by the time I fully wake up at night and realize she's crying.

Also, I enjoy nursing her to sleep. It's cuddly. It's bonding time. She isn't going to be a baby forever. I have to get in all the cuddles I can!

But it isn't easy. When she wakes up in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep, one of us always has to get up with her. She doesn't need to eat at night any more. She regularly goes 7 or 8 hours at night without eating, but she is still waking up regularly. She went for almost a month back in January where she slept very well in her crib, but no more!



We have no idea what to do. Sleep training feels wrong. After all, we're her parents, and it's our job to take care of her and her needs. It's not her job to make our lives as easy as possible. I wrote about this somewhat in my post Sleeping Babies and Narcissistic Parenting. It just doesn't feel right to do something we know makes her miserable and she can't understand just because as parents, we have certain wants.

Now, I know it may not sound like it, but I promise I do not judge parents that sleep train their kids, even if they use a "CIO" method. I know that each kid is different, and parents are different, and situations are different. I just know that for us, now, we can't bring ourselves to do it. That may change as she gets older. If we get closer to her first birthday and we still have sleep woes, we might do things differently. But only if it feels right and doesn't seem like we're just doing it for us. I can tell the difference between my daughter's fussy, "I'm so tired and I wish I were asleep already" cry and her "I'm afraid and lonely and insecure and I need you NOW" cry. One is light and plaintive, and the other is like screaming and comes with lots of tears. I'm willing to let her fuss a little, but the second kind of cry... not happening. She's my baby girl, my responsibility, mine to comfort and reassure. I can't sit by and let her feel like that without doing something. Not now, when she can't even understand what's going on. Maybe later when she's older, but not now.

I feel like my ramblings in this post are about as cohesive as my thoughts about babies and sleep. I guess one conclusion I can draw is this - parenting is hard! One of the hardest elements that I didn't really see coming is how difficult it is to make decisions. When she was born, I thought we would wait until she was three months old, pick a sleep training method, do it, and then everyone would sleep. And then when we got there, that didn't feel right, and now I know it's unrealistic for us. Before she was born, I knew I would exclusively breastfeed until she was six months old if at all possible. Now she's reaching for our food every chance she gets, and it's all I can do to continue to wait. I still haven't decided exactly how I want to introduce "solids", and I don't know if we're going to make it to the six month mark.

I have a feeling that no matter what I plan for now, three months from now, a year from now, or so on, the plan will change when we get there. I have read so many internet resources on sleep training, baby lead weaning, starting purees, breastfeeding until Baby is 1, 2, or beyond, and other various parenting "plans." I've come up with my own plan: "Try to figure out what works best for Baby Girl and what makes sense to me from a health, safety, and emotional well-being standpoint, and then try it. If it doesn't work, try something else."

And while I'm at it, I'm not going to get worked up about how other people do things. I'm just going to do what makes sense to me and take it one day at a time. I guess I'm just not the kind of person who likes to find someone else's "plan" and stick with it. I need to believe that what I'm doing makes sense for my family, and to do that, I always end up customizing things. It can be hard when there are so many people out there with opinions, and I love to hear all the theories and thoughts, but at the end of the day, it is okay to do things a little differently if you need to.

So no, I guess I'm not going to "sleep train" my daughter in the traditional sense. At least not right now. I might try some things, like keeping a sleep log for a few days, seeing if I can come up with any patterns, and trying to figure out what helps her fall asleep so I can help her do it on her own, but for now if she can't do it, I'm okay with helping her out. We'll see what we end up doing in the next few months, but for now, we'll take it one day at a time. Just as long as there's coffee in the morning.