Ferber Baby

Some babies are good sleepers, some are awful sleepers. I always classified Netty as somewhere in between. She would rarely fall asleep while nursing, and then I would rock her and sing to her until she fell asleep. Then we'd play the game of shuffling her in my arms so that I could lay her down gently, and all the while praying that she wouldn't wake up. At the first cry I'd jump up to get her and rock her until she again fell asleep. This method has been working for me up until the last month or so. Suddenly it was taking longer and longer for her to fall asleep. I was running out of songs to hum (hum because I have been surprised to learn how many words to Primary songs I DON'T remember), my arms would fall asleep, and still my baby girl was wide-eyed. A few nights it took as long as two hours before she would finally be "down" for the night. And that was just getting her to sleep the first time of the night. She'd wake up twice to nurse throughout the night as well.

While we were staying in Utah over Thanksgiving break we hit a new phase. It was the scream-bloody-murder-no-matter-what-my-parents-do phase. I thought that perhaps this was because we were in a different environment and she wanted to be home. We were all overly tired, and I was sure that upon coming home everyone would sleep better. I was right.....for two nights. And then we were back to hysterics. Poor Jonny didn't know what to do with Netty screaming for no apparent reason and me sobbing because I couldn't console my baby. On Thursday we hit a wall. Netty started kicking and hitting as she flailed and nearly gave me a black eye. So I started researching during nap time on Friday and decided that we were in desperate need of sleep training. I read about several different methods and didn't know which to try. After Friday night's fits in which Jon got involved, he agreed that what we were trying wasn't working. We decided to go with the Ferber, or "cry it out," method. It was drastic, but it promised the quickest results, something we needed.

Then I read a lady's comment on a discussion board. The comment went something like this: "This is the most awful thing I've ever head. Even letting your child cry for a minute is child abuse. I can't believe anyone would do this." She proceeded to go on about how anyone who lets their child cry shouldn't have children and that Dr. Ferber should lose his medical license if this is the kind of thing he tells parents. With that, I was in tears. I felt like I would never sleep again. It's times like this that I thank Heavenly Father for my husband. He took me in his arms and said, "That lady's an idiot. You need sleep. We all need sleep. We're doing this."

We started "Ferberizing" for Sunday's first nap. We each kissed Netty, told her she is a pretty girl and that we love her very much, and I put her down in her bed. I set the timer on my phone for our first three-minute fit. In that time she was twisted in her blankets, her face was red, and tears were streaming down her face. I went in, rubbed her back for a bit, talked to her, and left a sobbing baby for five more minutes. Then seven. Then nine. Each time I emerged from her room, the look of distress was deeper on my face, and each time Jon held me until the timer went off. Finally she nodded off in the thirteen-minute increment. And actually, she slept longer than she had in a long time. I made three trips into her room for her second nap before she fell asleep. That night it was only two trips. She woke up once at 6:00 a.m., I replaced her pacifier, and she slept until we woke her up at 9:30.

On Monday the starting increment was five minutes and again increased by two minutes. By bedtime, I only had to go in once, I never got up with her last night, and I'm not sure when she woke up this morning, but I woke up in a panic at 10:30 and she was playing happily in her bed. We're at her second nap now, and I haven't been in since I initially put her in bed twenty minutes ago.

I swore I would never let my baby cry like I have in the last couple days. As I read back through this, it all sounds so simple, and it is anything but simple. Her first nap today was excruciating for me as I set my timer for thirteen minutes and listened to her cry for most of that time. On so many occasions I've almost given in and picked her up. But what I've found is a baby who is sleeping through the night, is taking longer and better naps, and is happier during the day.

So, lady, you're an idiot.

A Year in the Making, but Really a Lifetime

I have this awful habit of not finishing what I start. I've been like this forever. For years my family has been on my case about publishing a book, and though I've started hundreds of stories, I have finished relatively few (and the ones I have finished have been short stories). My brother convinced me to illustrate one of my short stories with watercolors and market it as a children's book. I worked very hard for two days dividing the story into pages and sketching the illustrations for each page. And now the papers sit untouched in my filing drawer. I bought ten or so picture frames from D.I. a while back and was going to paint them, print out pictures, and make a picture collage for our bedroom, and I have yet to finish sanding them. I am highly distract-able, and I think that's my problem. As a child I would have these grandiose ideas about cleaning every inch of my bedroom when we were having company, and I would dawdle so much that my mom would get irritated, tell me I wasn't moving fast enough, and I would shove everything in my closet and under the bed. I have boxes of books that I bought with the intention of reading, but after getting almost halfway through any particular book, I'd find another book that "I just have to read." And so I have actually read very few books for an English major. Jonathan often gets irritated when I won't put down a project for even a minute, and every time, I try to explain that the second I put down a project, I put it down forever, or at least for a very, very long time.

When I was in elementary school, my dad taught me how to crochet. Yes, my dad. I think he taught me because I would get too frustrated with myself if I didn't get it just right immediately, and my mom would get too frustrated with me. My dad had a little more patience when it came to teaching me to do things that took any amount of skill. And so for months I would make endless chains that I would tie onto my stuffed animals, and then I would drag the stuffed animals through the house and outside and on the trampoline and in the garage and tie them up to things and pretend that they were my pets. In high school I finally decided that I was going to crochet a blanket for my niece Rochelle. It was a crooked mess and only half finished. My sister-in-law probably thought, "Uh, thanks, but no thanks," when she pulled it out of the gift bag. It was a few years before I reattempted crocheting anything so ambitious. I crocheted a blanket for my niece Sophie. It was pink and green to match her crib bedding. For the first time, something I made actually turned out! I was so proud of that thing, not because it looked good, but simply because I actually finished it. So then I decided that my next niece, Lily, needed one as well. Four times I restarted it. Every time it turned out more crooked than the time before. But I was determined to finish another blanket. I bought new yard. I crocheted row after row. And eventually, in moving to Idaho, to Utah, to Idaho, to Washington, to Idaho who knows how many times, I never finished it. In fact, I just found it last night and said, "Maybe I should think about finishing that someday."

Last December I decided to crochet a blanket for Netty. I thought it would be so wonderful for my baby to have a blanket made my me. Of course, we've already established that my crocheting skills are sub-par, and I had to restart five times, and take out a few rows several times. In the thick of student teaching, I set the blanket aside and decided it would be a much better project for that month after graduation before the baby was born. But then I was depressed because our apartment wasn't ready and we couldn't unpack and I wasn't going to be able to make a home for my baby. And then the baby came and we moved again, and then I hated that place even more, and we moved again, and now it's the following December and Netty is seven months old. But after discovering that we have almost no money for Christmas, I became even more determined to finish this blanket. Yesterday I finally finished, and the moment I did, I snapped a picture, wrapped it, and slid it beneath the tree. I know Netty will love it because every time I would pull it out to work on it she would scoot across the room and grab and pull and make crocheting an even more miserable experience for me.

After completing another small crocheting project and a half, I told Jonathan, "Hmm, maybe I'll start another blanket." And he rolled his eyes.