10.06.03

Comfort from another mom

Posted in Maddy's Second Month at 11:34 pm by tina

I had a couple of email correspondences with Tania (who has a 15 month cute daughter Natalie) about sleep training. She told me about the tough times she had to go through to train Natalie to be a ‘good sleeper’. I feel really comforted. Like her, sometimes I feel like the whole world is ‘against’ Joe and me. Our moms tell us how we were raised ‘rocking to sleep’ and ’slept with them’; some people think we ‘abuse’ them and one friend even made a remark as ‘raise her like a orphan’. And with Maddy’s ’slow’ progress due to her stubborn nature, I can’t even begin to dream about her sleeping through her short nap time.
Tania reminded me to celebrate the little victories. As I look back on the past two weeks (when we really started to train her), I do see some little ‘improvements’:
1) I’m able to calm her down with some talking and touching without picking her up from the crib 70% of the times now (In the beginning, she will NOT stop crying unless someone picks her up) Now I just have to work on her ’staying’ calm after I leave.
2) We’re on the Eat-Activity-Sleep routine more consistently
3) She slept through more than 40 mins of her nap time after I swaddled her like a egg roll today.

Tania is so right about another thing. She mentioned that it doesn’t matter how many ‘books’ we study, the only thing matters most at the end is that we study our children. I take pride at being able to differentiate Maddy’s cries (well, not totally yet, but I can tell the difference between I-have-gas and pick-me-up cries now). And I can sort of tell when Maddy is tired and just needs a little hugging and rocking. A couple weeks earlier, I was so upset when she cried because I didn’t know what was wrong with her.

Little steps… little victories… We are moving towards the right direction after all!!

Permalink