April 22, 2008

Ooooooooooooo.... I wanna kill myself....

It's 11 pm at night. Elliot went to sleep at 8 pm. Waxor and I
finally had a conversation about how we're handling his sleeping. We
agreed that I would only go to him twice a night to eat. As a result,
it is 11 pm and I am hiding in the basement, because Elliot is crying
upstairs.

See... Elliot has been waking up more and more at night recently.
Just... waking up. Not because he's hungry, and not because he needs
to be awake, just because. So Waxor and I assume that what many books
and people have told us is true - he's getting old enough to realize
that when he wakes up we come see him, and he likes it, so he doesn't
try to put himself to sleep.

Now, books and people disagree on what you DO about this. You can get
pediatricians who tell you that letting your baby cry will emotionally
scar them. You can get pediatricians who tell you that NOT letting
your baby cry is robbing them of the chance to learn to sleep and to
sleep well. Some will tell you that you have to help your baby learn
to go to sleep, others will tell you that going to your baby at all
will only interfere with their learning.

I don't know what the answer is, I'm not a pediatrician. I'm not even
sane at the moment. I do know that everyone, EVERYONE says you have to
be consistent. So, since Waxor and I agreed to try this, I am sitting
in the basement, hiding from Elliot. Not really from Elliot, you
understand, from the crushing sense of guilt I feel that my baby is
upstairs crying. I tried to sit and listen, I figured if he was going
to bawl his heart out the least I could do was act like an adult and
listen to the misery I was causing, but I chickened out.

So now I'm figuring that either half the people are right, and I'm
doing him good, or the other half are right and he'll never trust me
again.

I think I'll go kill myself now.w