Naps Are For Babies!

That is what Adrian tells me. AC has always been lacking in the sleeping department. We have introduced the Ferber method for months now but we really stuck to it the past week and a half while I've been on vacation from work. For everyone who may not know what the Ferber method is...

In a nutshell, Ferber says you can teach your baby to soothe himself to sleep when he's physically and emotionally ready, usually sometime between 4 and 6 months of age. He recommends following a warm, loving bedtime routine and then putting your baby in bed awake and leaving him (even if he cries) for gradually longer periods of time. Putting a child to bed awake, says Ferber, is crucial to successfully teaching him to go to sleep on his own.

Parents are instructed to pat and comfort their baby after each predetermined period of time, but not to pick up or feed their baby. This routine is called "progressive waiting." The suggested waiting time, which Ferber charts in his book, is based on how comfortable you are with the technique, how many days you've been using it, and how many times you've already checked on your child that night.

After a few days to a week of gradually increasing the waiting time, the theory goes, most babies learn to fall asleep on their own, having discovered that crying earns nothing more than a brief check from you.

So AC now learns to either poop or take his paci and throw it across the floor and then cry harder. He knows with either act I'll be back in a jiffy to attend to him. Yes, I am a sucka! but it just isn't right to let babies sit in their mess. I will have to learn to let go of the paci throwing. He'll have to learn that once he loses the paci it's not coming back to him, that'll teach him not to spit out his paci! I sometimes wonder does my 9 months old have the brain capacity to make the coorelation that if he squeezes out poop mommy will appear? that child never seizes to amaze me! the thought of AC trying his hardest to poop cracks me up. The Ferber theory is killing me! I'm exhausted (believe it or not, this morning it took 3.5 hours of crying before he went down for a nap, I like to blame it on the fact that AC is teething again and he's in pain). All I want to do is rock him back to sleep so I can go back to sleep but instead we have this drawn out process every night and during every nap time so that AC can learn to fall asleep by himself.