Everyone warned us to bid sleep goodbye. We knew what we were facing. When we brought Alice home and snuggled her into her bassinet beside the bed, we didn’t really expect her to sleep well. That’s why we didn’t concern ourselves over her frequent waking. We assumed that her inconsolable crying was a normal part of being a newborn, and settled into the state of exhaustion that comes with loving a brand new human.
But then, two weeks after Alice was born, my doctor urgently readmitted me to St. Joe’s Mom and Baby ward to treat a uterine infection from delivery. Since I was nursing, Alice needed to stay with me, and Dan joined us to help out.
Despite sleeping away from home, we tried to keep Alice’s bedtime routine consistent, rocking her, nursing her, changing her, and zipping her into her jammies all in the right order at the right time. Alice also tried to be consistent by waking to fuss every half hour or so. My nurse, a tiny, pretty filipina woman, seemed to be concerned over the fussing. She’d eye the cradle each time she came in to check my IV or blood pressure.
Finally, in her thick accent, she offered, “You want me show you how to make her sleep?”
We were taken aback. Were we missing something? Doing something wrong?
“She cold,” our nurse told us in a matter-of-fact tone.
“No,” I was relieved, thinking the nurse hadn’t seen the jammies, “She’s wearing this warm flannel. She’s not cold.”
As if she hadn’t heard me, she asked, “You want me warm her up?”
I sighed, “Sure.”
Why not? We were desperate enough to try anything!
She disappeared for quite awhile. I figured she had taken the hint and dropped the idea. Just when Alice was waking up...AGAIN...crying, our beautiful nurse came to the rescue with a huge stack of receiving blankets.
“You have to make them warm,” she advised.
Sure enough, she had heated the blankets in the labor and delivery incubator. She spread two of them out and placed Alice for swaddling. Then she piled several more onto Alice’s chest before expertly wrapping her into a little burrito bundle. The last of the warm blankets went under Alice’s head, onto which she pulled an infant beanie.
“Little babies need help being warm,” our angel of a nurse stated before bustling out of the room.
I watched incredulously as my baby visibly relaxed. Her crying stopped and her ice-blue eyes peacefully closed. Instead of quickly waking, she slept deeply for longer than she ever had in her short life. The poor little thing had been trying to tell us for two weeks that she was cold while we assumed she was crying for no reason.
This whole experience came with a big lesson for us as parents. You see, Alice is naturally a pretty happy baby who rarely fusses (now that we’re keeping her warm!). The incident taught us to observe her closely, so that when she does get upset, we’re much more likely to successfully identify the problem. Because of this, she’s learned to trust us to help her, and we’ve learned to trust her to let us know when she needs us. Is it a perfect system? No. Does she always have a good reason for crying? Nope. But our belief that crying was nothing to be worried about left our baby uncomfortably cold for the first two weeks of her life. It still makes me tear up a little to remember it. I just don’t see fitting the “cry it out” method into our life as a family.
I know many parents use this method extremely successfully. If that’s you, leave a comment with your story! Maybe, like us, you’re allowing a pause of ten to fifteen minutes to allow your baby to try to put herself back to sleep. How’s that working for you? Do you completely eschew the method and immediately respond to your baby? Tell me about it! Thanks for reading, and see you next time!
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