I'm not Baby Wise

...but maybe I should be.

In ALL my years my 3 short years as a parent I have read one parenting book. It was a great book about rearing your child to seek the heart of God rather than out of fear or ONLY obedience. It was hard to read because it was and is so different from the way I was raised. It is also hard to implement and re-program myself.

The point of my post is not child rearing or discipline; trust me I am FAR from an expert in this area. I need to talk about sleep, sweet sleep that eludes me, save the few days where someone else has taken care of my children. I am an 8 hour kinda gal. I need 8 solid hours of sleep to feel myself.

When we had Dade I truly had no idea that there were sleep training books or that there may ever be a need for such books. He was easy peasy. I didn't really have a set schedule with him. I wanted him to be a go with the flow sort of baby and he was. By 3 months he was sleeping though the night. Occasionally, he woke up when he was teething or sick.

Along came the girls. Since they were smaller I figured they may take longer to sleep and thought surely they would be sleeping through the night by 6 months. Well, here we are 4 days shy of their first birthday and they are STILL waking up. In fact the past two nights Coralee has woken up twice per night. Are you kiddin' me? We have tried increasing the number of bottles and the amount in each bottle. Both girls have consistently been 4oz. drinkers, occasionally 6ozs. Their daytime schedule is consistent with two naps, three meals, four bottles and two snacks. Yet when they wake up at night you can actually hear their little tummies grumbling. What, oh what is a mother to do?? I’ve toyed with giving them only water at night, but haven’t actually made the switch because of the grumbling tummies.

At around four months of age an acquaintance at church started raving about Baby Wise. “It’s the perfect solution that works for every baby.” This was her claim. She is also a first-time mom to 1 baby. At that time I hit up my friend google and read an overview. Establish a schedule: Eat, Play, Nap Rinse and Repeat. Not a problem we were already there. The thing that I can’t do is let my children Cry It Out (not at 4 months and not now) We do put them to bed at night awake and they fall asleep. Sometimes at nap-time or at night they fuss and moan, we don’t get them, but if they are screaming and crying I can’t bear to listen to that. On top of that the girls share a room and do wake each other up, if we don’t get to the crier fast enough. Unfortunately there is no other option. We have a 4^th bedroom but it is in the basement. I’m certainly not putting myself or my babies two floors apart.

There must be another way. Right?? There has to be something else. Yesterday when I came home from work our nanny said she was checking it out on, good ole faithful, google. What she found was an earlier bedtime. How early? 6:30 – 7:30. My heart sank. Jon and I get home from work at 6. We make dinner, eat, family time, baths and the girls are getting their last bottles around 8pm. How could we possibly get them to bed any earlier? And don’t even get me started on the fact that the change would net me a total of 1 and ½ hours of face time with my babies each day during the week.

So I’m still at a loss, what is the answer? Do I suck it up and re-adjust our schedule for a 7pm bedtime? How do I do that without being frazzled and frustrated?

So I ask you? Yes you. New moms, seasoned moms, one baby, 12 babies… What did/do you do? When was/is your baby’s bedtime? Are you Baby Wise? Am I wrong? How did you make it work? Is it too late and I’m doomed to horrible sleepers? 17 more years of waking up three times a night…