For my own guilt

I suffer from a guilt-complex.

Yep, and it got much worse when I became a mother! Am I going to ruin him/her? Was I too harsh? Am I too soft? Am I spoiling him/her? I'm such a bad mother. She's a better mother. I'm not making the right decisions. And on and on.

Definitely something I need to work on:) But I have a feeling I am not alone in this! You may wonder why I am writing this and to be honest it's completely spurred by some articles/comments I read on the internet when researching baby+self-soothing and by my inadequate feelings as a mother. A guilty feeling one.

When you become a parent, you are told by many sources that your baby needs to learn to self-soothe eventually; that it is healthy for them and beneficial in the long run. I mean, you really don't want to have to follow your kid to college with their favorite blankie and have to rock them to sleep, do you?

I have always tried to teach my kiddos to self-soothe to help with their sleep~usually they all have found their fingers and were INCREDIBLY happy once they did!

See exhibits A and B.

A.

B.

Well, apparently, I am the only horrible mother in the world who believes that your child should learn to self-soothe at some point. I saw comments from other mothers such as, "I can't believe anyone would be cruel enough to let their child cry for even 5 minutes!" or "It isn't natural for a mother to let her baby cry." or "Your baby is going to grow up and have disattachment disorder (Or something like that) and have trouble relating to people and feel lonely and unloved."

Great. My worst fears just came true and all my children will end up in counseling later in life! Score three, Heidi!

I guess, for the sake of my own guilty feelings and incredibly strong desire to be a good mama, I must clarify my sleep solutions with my sweet Little Miss. I have probably mentioned several times her inability to be consistent with sleep and it has driven me insane at times because I get so frustrated that I don't know how to help her! She is SO different from the boys and what worked with them doesn't work with her.

Let me back up. With Samuel, it took ONE night of letting him cry 5 minutes to get him to start falling asleep on his own. Seriously. But he's always been like that. You teach him something once, he learns it! It killed me to hear him cry but it helped him because he wanted to sleep so bad.

Zakkai, was just a little harder and I couldn't bear to let him cry more than 2 minutes at a time. Cry, go in and soothe him, cry, go in and soothe til he gave up. He found his cute little finger at 8 weeks old and started his great sleeping within week.

Now comes my tough cookie, Miss E. We started our "sleep-training" at about 2 months and by that I mean a good consistent bedtime routine and maybe letting her fuss a couple of minutes if she refused to be soothed. She, opposite to the big bros, got super upset by crying only 2 (of the longest minutes of my life) and effectively broke my (and Ben's) heart into a million pieces. She would only sleep well in her carseat and not on Saturdays (?) and we backed off for one month, helping her get to sleep with repeated reinserts of the dang pacifier til she gave up.

It really helped to give up for a bit with having her fuss for a minute or two as I was feeling so stressed about her sadness. And we had some peace.

For a couple of weeks.

And then we got to the past 3 weeks. Where I have been running in and out of her room ALLLLLL day and evening every 5-7 minutes to put the pacifier back in because she would wake up the second it fell out. Talk about stressful when you cannot get anything done because you are doing that for up to 2 1/2 hours in the evenings! And that makes for one frazzled mama and one overtired baby!

She did find her fingers a few weeks ago which led to her sleeping through the night because she could put herself back to sleep. (Til she quit this week. grr)

However. And the 'however' is the point of the whole post! However, she absolutely could not put herself to sleep without help, to the point where she would be so tired she would cry no matter what you did! Cry when you held her, rocked her, put her down, gave her the paci, took the paci away, and on and on.

That's when I got to the point of letting her cry for a little bit because sometimes she likes to cry. Really. I barely have made it to 5 minutes of her crying up to this point before going in to "help" her. I cannot stand to hear my babies cry and especially cry hard.

It is in my strong motherly instinct to comfort them and fix whatever the problem is! But we got pretty desperate last week with the not-sleeping and back to nighttime wake-ups, hence the 10 minute rule. Nothing else was working.

Harsh? Maybe. Necessary? Yes. Desperate? You betcha! Maybe I will be labeled a bad, uncaring mother who is leading her child into abandonment issues and later-in-life counseling but honestly, I see it that I am helping my little girl sleep better so she can be better rested and happier, which is good all the way around. Not to mention a more peaceful mommy who can better care for her children.

And let me tell you, this little girl gets more love, more kisses and hugs, gets cooed at and talked to, touched and tickled and soothed and plain old adored more than any baby I know! (slight bias may be present.)

So am I doing this wrong? I don't know. I don't know what else to do with a baby who wants to sleep/doesn't want to sleep/wants to cry/wants to fight/is overtired and needs a little push to sleep on her own.

So call me human. Call me fallible. Call me tough. Call me whatever you want.

Or call me what I am: In love with the 3 little people entrusted to my (our) care. All I know is that I try my hardest, by the Grace of God, to love these children to the best of my ability and trust that God will cover me in my mistakes.

Because I make a lot of them.