Thankful Thursday - Failed Controlled Crying?

BabyCool has not been the easiest of babies. Cute - YES! Easy - NO! He decided at 6 weeks that really, to be honest, he preferred to feed only on one 'side' {male family members read this blog, cannot say 'breast'}. That is right, for 12 months, he was a 'Uni-Boober' of his own decision. 

He has also been a terrible sleeper. Terrible. For the first few weeks he literally slept ON me at night. I got loads of sleep, but it was all while sitting up holding a tiny boy against me. It was lovely, but it quickly grew thin, I just wasn't getting good quality sleep. So then it was a comedy of errors trying to get him to sleep anywhere else. I thought I had won a tactical warfare game when I worked out that he liked to sleep on his tummy, with the bassinet propped up on 3 thin books, being jiggled while listening to a doppler sound on my iPhone. 


Anyway, things were pretty bad a few months ago when it would take over an hour of jiggling to get him to sleep during the day, most days he would then only sleep for 20-40 minutes. This was not enough - for him or me! He was cranky and clingy and grizzly most of the time and spent most of the afternoons wailing and wailing. My poor boy. Thank goodness we never had to settle him through the night, because he was so darn tired he couldn't stay awake any longer!

So we tried controlled crying. {I think I may have just lost 14 readers with that sentence}. We did everything right, had the timer, had the plan, discussed it with our child health nurse etc etc. I could go into the numbers of minutes it took to get him to sleep and how much time we spent in his room - but - really who needs that kind of information? After a month of incessant timed screaming, I rang a child health nurse in tears. It just wasn't working. I was beside myself.


She was very kind and listened to my blubbering and said that for that day, to do whatever it took to get him to sleep. Whether it be rocking or shushing or whatever, just get him to sleep then have a nap myself. She told me to take a week off and just take stock. I never realised that Controlled Crying would not work. In my head, it made sense. In BabyCool's head, it was not going to work from the start.


During that week 'Off' from Controlled Crying, I rocked BabyCool to sleep and he went to sleep within minutes of being put in his cot, I still patted him, but he did the work of getting to sleep himself. I thought this was just because he was so tired from the 'Month of Misery' - but a couple of months down the road, and he is still doing it! He is now having two sleeps of a minimum 90 minutes!


This morning I had to have a chuckle while out at the grocery store.... 

My 1 year old little boy, who at 9 months who could stay awake from 5am - 7pm with a twenty minute nap, asleep in a shopping trolley...  Go figure. It just goes to show that I really know NOTHING, about babies. Not a thing.


I tell people we failed at Controlled Crying and I make a bit of a joke about it. But I am thankful that we did it. The hours of patting/shushing/rocking a baby to sleep before we tried Controlled Crying were hard, now he goes to sleep in under 10 minutes. I am claiming that as success, plus, I get to have those cuddles where I get to feel his little body go limp and see his eyelids flutter shut. In all of my days, I will never regret that. I am thankful for those moments. 


For the last two nights, he has gone to sleep on his own at night... We are both thankful that he can settle himself to sleep, but a little sad too... 


It seems appropriate to be Thankful on Thursday - with katesaysstuff and it is a bit of iPPP - with abelleabeanandachicagodog