Ok, for anyone who has read this blog before, or have had a conversation with me, you know I am 100% unequivocally against the whole "cry it out" method. I think teaching a baby that it can't find comfort in you, as a parent, will lead to disastrous and long lasting effects later down the road. I am not a believer in forcing your child to sit there and scream and cry because they are not fitting your idea of when a good bedtime is.
That being said.
I do believe a baby will fight sleep and force themselves to stay up to be around you and play with stuff. Because of this acknowledgement, we have just instituted a new bed time ritual. It involves waiting for Joey to show us he's tired (he does this by whining and rocking back and forth on his hands and knees). And then feeding him and putting him promptly in his bed. Awake.
At first this went against everything I felt inside. I wanted to cry and I wanted to scoop him up and hold him forever. Then I listened to what was going on. He wasn't crying. He was whining, he was annoyed, he was in his crib rocking back and forth but he was definitely not crying.
He was asleep within 10 minutes.
WHY THE HELL DIDN'T WE TRY THIS EARLIER!!!
For the last month and a half we have been staying up until 10:30 or 11 when it was damn clear he was tired around 9 or 9:30.
I am happy we figured this out now. And I am happy Joe actually shows us he is tired. It makes a world of difference knowing he is genuinely tired and really just being a turd and fighting to stay up.
So, air high five to us, we are getting our sanity back.
Oh, and ever since we've started doing this, he has been doing that one thing that old people do that involves only waking up when its time to wake up, ya know, at the appropriate time in the morning (I can't risk jinxing us, so I hope you understand what that meant).
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