Rites of Passage

Rhys has his first ear infection.  I'd been naively hopeful that being a breast milk-fed baby would help him avoid this unfortunate rite of passage.  Apparently not.  Daycare is breast milk's kryptonite. 

I know Rhys wasn't feeling great, but he didn't seem to be in too much pain and I think he was psyched about another week at home with Mama and Dad.  While we love hanging out with him, it made for a stressful week in terms of our jobs.  We went in for partial days, worked from home during his naps and again in the evenings and did our best to get some sleep at night (Rhys had other ideas).  

Ahhh, sleep.  My favorite topic.  It seems that the dirty secret of parenting is the use of "cry-it-out" as a means to get your baby to sleep through the night.  Nearly everyone we've talked to has done it and found it to be quickly effective.  As an expectant mother, I was horrified by the idea.  Now I am horrified by the idea of continuing to get up 3+ times per night for the indefinite future.  

As is typical for us, Brian and I have bantered this conversation/decision around for awhile.  We've read books, talked to other people, talked to each other some more...and done nothing.  Until last night.  After a lengthy and thorough conversation regarding our game plan (we probably should have documented our decision tree in Visio) and determining that Rhys was healthy enough, we pulled the trigger. 

When sweet Rhys awoke at 11pm, I fed him a big 'ol bottle as we still don't think it's reasonable to expect him to sleep 12 hours without eating.  When he awoke again at 3am, we just listened.  He whimpered and cried for awhile, but there were many punctuations of silence when he seemed to fall back asleep.  He did so for good at 4:30am.  Ironically, by then I was a little hungry and needed a snack before I could fall back asleep. 

After bracing ourselves for the worst, we found the experience to be relatively painless.  The tone of his whimpering was one of annoyance:  "Hey, big people, I'm awake and ready for our routine of milk and rocking.  Where are you already?!"  Listening to it was not hard at all. 

Proponents of certain parenting philosophies would say that we are cold and heartless and have damaged Rhys' trust in us.  I say not helping a baby learn how to sleep on his own, thereby giving him the opportunity for long stretches of brain-developing sleep, is far more damaging.  I also say that at some point, and we are there, a well-rested family must be the priority over meeting Baby's every last wish.  I'm sure Rhys would have preferred to some assistance getting back to sleep but he didn't need it.

If Rhys' emotional security was damaged last night, it certainly wasn't evident today.

I know it's unlikely to be a linear progression, but hopefully we are on our way to a most wonderful rite of passage: sleeping through the night. 

(I pray I have not jinxed us by putting those sweet, sweet words in writing.)