Your baby will be a great source of joy and you will love them immensely but there will be times (especially at 3 a.m.) that you wish that they would just take care of themselves for 30 minutes so you can do what you want... namely, sleep. You will feel like everything revolves around the baby.. because, well, it does. That is exhausting and you are not a bad person if you don't love every minute of it. It is natural to want to care for your child and to love it but it is NOT natural to be up at 3 am breastfeeding, pumping or warming up bottles, changing diapers and soothing a screaming little person... that's naturally SLEEP time. Fortunately, this is short-lived so just keep looking for the light at the end of the tunnel... it's coming. The baby WILL sleep. I promise.
Here's proof:
A quick word of advice: Let the baby cry it out. Not at 3 months old and not even at 4 but by 6 or 7 months they are developmentally ready to cry it out and go to sleep at night. It is painful at first but absolutely sanity saving in the long run. Liam started sleeping through the night at about 3 or 4 months but would go to sleep at a different time every night and would have to be held until he fell asleep. Sometimes he was in bed at 8. Sometimes it was 11. We let this go on entirely too long. He was 9 or 10 months old before we started putting him down at the same time every night, whether he was awake or asleep, and letting him cry. It was terrible at first and we made a time limit of 30 minutes. If he cried for longer than 30 minutes we would check on him. You know what? From the very first night he never made it 30 minutes and gradually the crying spells dwindled down to a few minutes of mild fussing. Now, at almost 13 months, he sometimes cries and sometimes just talks to his stuffed animals (or himself) but he is almost always quiet within 5 minutes. Our lives are soooooooooo much easier and he is on a great schedule and a great routine which helps him feel safe and secure. We do the same things every night and he has the same 3 soft toys in his crib with the same music and lights. As a matter of fact, we got him a new night light about a month ago and it had to be taken out of his room because it disrupted his routine and he stayed up staring at it. Point being, the BEST thing for a baby is a routine and you are not cruel or unloving to create one and stick to it. That's what parenting is all about. That's just my opinion. There are A LOT of people out there who disagree with me and that is OK too but, if you are at your wit's end, then there's a good chance your baby is too... right?
Your life will revolve around baby during the daytime too. But we can talk about that in a later post. I don't want to overwhelm you with all of this "truth."
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