Terrible Mother

ladyprof · December 2011

Seriously - I'm having problems. The night before last, my husband woke up at 7:00 am and came to my side of the bed and the monitor was plugged in and the sound was all the way down. We went up and one baby was still asleep and the other was crying, but hadn't been for long - no wet face, etc. They normally wake up around 3 or 4 during the night now. No one seemed overly traumatized, and we thought it was some anomaly where the power went down on the parent unit between dinner and bedtime and plugging it in reset the volume down low.

Last night I woke up with the monitor in bed with me around 5:20am and it was unplugged and turned down even though I triple checked it before going to bed. Babies were asleep when I woke up for no reason and in a panic turned the sound up. Am I turning the monitor down in my sleep when hearing the babies (what a horrible, horrible thought)? My husband says we need to put the monitor on his side, but I have always woken up before him and gotten him up in the night. Why would I suddenly stop responding to my children's crying and not wake up? I fear they have "cried it out" for two nights now for I don't know how long to go back to sleep and I have damaged them somehow. My husband says this may not be happening (the me turning down or unplugging the monitor which causes it to turn itself down) but what other explanations are there?

Can I just have some reassurance? Has anyone ever done this?

SoldiersGreenBean · December 2011

Don't overthink it. You haven't done permanent damage to your children. You haven't even done temporary damage.

We kept the monitor on my husband's side of the bed. I was usually the first to wake up either way, and I figured he had a greater chance of waking up if it was on his side. Some nights he did wake up first, which means I absolutely needed the sleep I was getting.

Why not try your H's solution and move the monitor? If it doesn't work, try something different. Parenting is a giant guessing game.

Seriously, though. Don't overthink what happened. You're exhausted, and you needed the sleep. No harm done.

LucyRicardo3 · December 2011

i agree 110% with Soldier ! How I wish to be able to sleep that soundly!

google123 · December 2011

I don't believe that Cry-it-out damages our kids, no matter how many times they try to publish it in "psychology today" journal and convince me otherwise.

I'm sure they are fine, even if it happened a few times. Children are very resilient, especially babies.

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