falling

falling… behind.

I’m falling behind, people. On emails, on responding to commenters, on getting my next post written for WEtv.com. I called in reinforcements for tomorrow — nanny care for the boy so I will be able to focus for a few hours. Everyone says how great it is, how lucky I am, to do the work-at-home thing. I am. Yes, and it’s really hard, especially when I have a day like today — and yesterday — when both husband and baby have been sick and it’s not just the mothering and the working but someone had to do the dishes and the laundry and the sad fact is that Scott does way more of that stuff than I do most weeks, so with him down for the count — at least he could watch the boy from his prone position on the couch while I got the chores done.

And I was inordinately proud of myself for doing the chores. Been meaning to contribute more. Surprised I had the energy for it.

Which leads me to:

Falling… asleep.

As far as I can trace back, the boy started to develop a night waking habit while we were in L.A. and all sleeping in the same room (a.k.a.: next to the taco truck — as in if you were sleeping… you’d smell the meat cooking and get hungry too.). That coincided nicely with more teething, and learning how to stand up in the crib, and a possible fear of the dark, and getting better and better at yelling expressing himself verbally.

And then I wrote about it and got into that “Thing” with that other mom which threw me into a wasn’t-I-supposed-to-be-an-attachment-mother-? panic.

And then he decided (he’s the DECIDER) that although this was never true before, now he would ONLY go to sleep if he nursed himself there. Period.

Fast forward to this past week or so, and the worst nights we’ve EVER had. Three hour crying/fighting sessions with him refusing to sleep from midnight to three a.m. one night, one to four another. Waking up at 3 and staying awake till 10 a.m. Nursing several times throughout the night, and if he can’t nurse himself to sleep, not sleeping.

Scott started doing mid-night bottle feedings which worked for a few nights — getting the boy back to sleep right after. And then, the boy decided he didn’t want the bottle any more.

Today we called the pediatrician. And for better or worse, we decided to follow her advice. No more nursing him down; no nighttime feedings.

It was time to sleep train again.

We swapped the routine, explaining it to him as we went. Tonight he nursed first, then had his bath, then books, then bed.

He stood in the crib and screamed. Scott checked on him at the 5 minute mark, 10 minutes, 20, 40, returning the boy to the lying down position, only to have him flip over and pop back up again. Whenever it seemed like the crying stopped, I begged him to go in and make sure Jonah wasn’t sleeping standing up. I knew if I went in to check, console, reposition, it wouldn’t work (boobs = taco truck). At one hour and fifteen minutes, the boy was finally asleep.

Now, we wait…