Intro and Dilemma

charmcity82

My LO is 15 weeks old (where has the time gone?!).  Overall he has done really well - we are EBF with the occasional bottle of pumped milk, and he is growing and starting to do all kind of fun things like rolling over and playing with toys in his hands.

Our issue is naps and the process of getting him back down to bed after night feedings.  These things are new developments - I like to put him in the Ergo for snoozes during the day, and in general he sleeps well on his own in his crib.  We have a very steady routine each night of changing - story - nursing - and then I put him down almost asleep.  If he fusses, we go up and give him his pacifier and pat his tummy and he goes back to sleep.

Well lately he has been really resisting getting back to sleep.  My pediatrician wants me to start putting him down and letting him "be" for 30 minutes in his crib alone so he can learn to self-soothe.  She says we should put him down, leave, and turn off the monitor for 30 minutes to see if he can settle himself down.

I hate this to my very core.  While I don't want to judge others for using this method, the idea that letting a baby cry teaches them something good makes no intuitive sense to me.  I am having trouble standing up for my opinion though, because after a few extremely fussy nights my DH now wants us to explore this possibility - this is after we both agreed earlier that we never wanted our little guy to cry-it-out.

I need help sticking to my guns!  I hate everything about that idea, but at the same time I want him to be able to eventually fall asleep on his own.  It was better when DH and I were on the same page about this, but now I feel like I have to fight for how I want things to go.

Anyone have any advice for how to convince DH that letting him cry-it-out is a bad idea?  

TiffanyBerry

Your pedi is .... well, I'm going to say it ... incompetent.  Leave your 15 week old alone, un-monitored, for 30 minutes?  That's some of the stupidest "advice" I've ever heard.  And dangerous.

He's nearing the 4 month wakeful period, where everything changes.  Sleep isn't this gradual set of improvements for babies.  It's periods of ok stuff followed by nasty regressions followed by improvements and more regressions and more improvements, and so on.  For years.  It's NORMAL, now that he is better able to take in his outside world, to have trouble shutting it out, but he doesn't have the skills to do this on his own, and he doesn't have the skills to LEARN to self-soothe on his own yet either.  (He can, however, learn abandonment.  Not that you want him to learn that.)

Comfort him.  Help him fall asleep as best you can figure out.  If that's just rubbing his back while he is in the crib, great. But if he needs to be held for a while, that's just fine too.  Heck, my high-needs, still-doesn't-like-to-sleep daughter was bounced to sleep (naps, bedtime, everything) until she was 1 year old.  (And I don't mean 5-10 minutes of bouncing; I mean it generally took an hour.)

Listen to your instincts and discuss (kindly) this with your husband.  Try to understand the underpinnings behind both of your "sides" and see where you can reach comfortable (if not middle) ground.

And find a new pedi.  That one is ... /shudder ... all wrong.

musicalmama5

I was pretty much going to say all of the above.

We went through the 4 month wakeful like whoa. I was super braggy about what a good sleeper DS was when he was a newborn and then BAM everything changed.  

My advice is to first get a new pedi. Pedis shouldn't give sleep advice (unless it's obvious that your child isn't getting the proper amount). Then I would say just nurse him to sleep, instead of putting him down almost asleep. IME that's way easier. Experiment with sleeping arrangements. This was about the age that we started bedsharing in earnest. Much easier to get the baby back to sleep if he only barely stirs before I stick a boob in his mouth. 

And as for educating your DH, I'm sure @Emerald27 can chime in with some awesome resources for you to show him!

charmcity82

Thanks so much everyone. I know that if I talk about it and give DH some really good reasons he'll be back to what we originally decided. I think these few days of weird sleep for our son and minimal sleep for us just threw us both for a loop.
As for pediatrician, I will seriously think about a change!
LO was soothed to bed last night and his first sleep was 6 hours before waking to eat, so hopefully we're slowly getting back on track naturally.

TiffanyBerry

LO slept through the night (by definition, that's about five hours at this age), and the pedi wants to mess with that?!?!?! He's a fool!