Mindless Juices

Sleep.  For any new parent, I’d say this is the most important thing in their world.  Simply, without good sleep for both parent and child, there’s no chance of anyone being happy.  So, you read all sorts of books.  The consensus seems to be, start early, establish a routine and realize your child is an individual and has individual needs.

These books all have different methods for sleep training.  There’s the Weissbluth, Ferber, Sears, etc.  If you’re a parent, you probably know them all.  Well, they all fly to the extremes or provide no actual solutions for sleep-weary parents.  If they provide any recommendations, it’s either let them cry it out or don’t let them cry at all.  Even the ones that do a little crying is just a lot for any new parent to take.  I mean, you try with everything you’ve got to keep them from crying, why start at bedtime?

Well, let me tell you that these books provide little to no support for an adoptive family.  We can’t start early.  If there ever was a routine, we don’t know it.  And, for healthy attachment purposes, crying it out doesn’t seem like a good idea.  Our son was basically turning eight months when we got him.  From what I’ve read, this is *the* month where any routines and happy parents find themselves suddenly in the midst of an uncooperative baby.

I’m no professional, but I’m guessing around this time, they’re more mobile and more interested in the world than before.  “Sleep?  Why?  There much more interesting things to do.”

So, for the past month or so, we’ve been sleep challenged.  Up until now, it’s not been an issue since we’d play baby “catch” and hand off and get some Z’s.  However, with mommy returning to work, there’s no one to hand off to in the morning for me anymore.   So, sleeping more at night is my top priority.

First, to explain why, I only have ot look at yesterday compared to today.  Yesterday, I didn’t sleep much more than an hour (if that) by 3 am when The Boy was completely awake and not interested in going back to sleep.  I couldn’t take any more and woke up my wife for the hand off.  I didn’t want to since she had to go to work the next day, but I had to.  I got a few hours of restless sleep before being jostled awake and being told that it was time for my wife to start getting ready.  The Boy spent most of the day in his exersaucer.  I couldn’t lift him when he wanted to be held, I could barely play with him.  I found it difficult to read his cues.  I got frustrated easily.  Eventually, I had to call my wife at 3pm and she offered to come home early.  I gladly accepted.  I manage to sneak in a little nap before The Boy’s bathtime and bedtime.

Well, I couldn’t get back to sleep just a few hours later, so I did some stuff until the boy eventually woke up.  A quick pat down got him back to sleep.  As I searched the web for answers, I re-read a nice summary of sleep techniques on parenting.iVillage.com.  Then, I realized that none of these things are going to work for us and our baby.  Half of them don’t address sleep issues past the first few months and none of them address adoption properly.

So, I going to create the Australie method.  It’s not going to be scientific, it’s going to be real.  I’m going to steal a little from everyone and make a method that helps keep the baby from crying, but also teaches them to self-soothe.  The basic principle is address your baby’s needs, but slowly reduce the time spent soothing the baby.  Whether or not you share a bed with your child is irrelevant.  If you do, it’s less distance to soothe them and you can deal with the repurcussions of sharing a bed later (if any).

I’m going to try to create a separate blog for this.  Just in case it works for me and other people, then maybe other people will be able to find the other blog easier.  See my Blogroll for the link or click here.