Dr. W, Night #3...

...Screw you Dr. W!

Okay, he does have some good things to say in his book...but the rest is ridiculous. He is all about letting your baby cry it out at nighttime with no time limit...no time limit!! And to also not check on them, not once. Does he think that we have a camera set up in the room so we can watch her in case she gets a limb stuck in a railing, throws up, etc. etc? He is too extreme. And we have (slowly) reached the same conclusion everyone else has before us, I am sure- you need to do what works for you. And we say, his method sucks.

What happened to make me say this, you wonder?

We put Wrennie to bed at 7pm, and she was happy to go to sleep. However, Kenton couldn't get a burp from her after feeding her, which almost always means she will wake up  half and hour later because it needs to get out.
So low and behold, she wakes up around 8pm. Kenton goes in to try and burp her. Then he puts her back down but she is awake now and cries. So we leave her for 10 min. Go back in, check, leave her. The crying starts to escalate. She is now not just crying but has this horrible high pitched wail that breaks our hearts...not to mention you are sure Children's Services will be driving up to your house soon! After a few minutes of that, I go back in to check on her, and two seconds earlier she has become so upset that she throws up in her crib.
That was it.
We picked her up, cleaned her up, and brought her out into the living room with us. She sat in between us as we watched an episode of 30 Rock together and sucked on her soother, happy to be with us.
Then I fed her a bottle again, and she started to drift in my arms. I burped her, and layed her in the crib. She cuddled her soft stuffy toy, and with a few back rubs, fell asleep.

Poor thing.

She slept until 3:45am, I gave her a bottle, and without any trouble, went back to sleep until 6:30am.

We have now decided (like everyone else in the world has already realized but us until now) that we are not going to religiously follow some stupid book.
We are going to still let her cry a little at bedtime...but not let it get to the point it did. We are also not going to put her to bed quite so early. It just doesn't seem to work. I guess we will stick with the 7:30pm bedtime instead. At least that was working better than what we were trying.


Maybe Dr. W's "extinction" method does work. I don't feel like finding out now. I certainly don't like his advice on not checking on your child even once while they cry, or giving them a limitless time to cry at night.
I am also pretty sure the book was written in 1987 originally, and the advice does sound somewhat dated.

Here is a quote from his book I found rather humorous. He is talking about different 'sleep problems' and addressing Nightmares here:
"I myself have had nightmares of suffocation, strangulation, breathlessness, choking, being crushed or trapped, drowning, entrapment, and being buried alive-but only when I sleep on my back or have an alcoholic drink before going to bed....You see, my nightmares occur when my upper airway is partially blocked, and this obstruction happens only when I sleep on  my back or drink alcohol before bedtime."

Wow. I told Kenton I think this guy has sleep apnea actually! Too bad this line comes from the end of the book, otherwise I would have written him off sooner!

Don't you ever feel like rubbing your dinner all over your face?