Thursday, February 19, 2009

Baby Boot Camp

We have had to do "Baby Boot Camp" now 3 times. Well, the 3rd is still in process. This is that moment when you finally say "enough is enough." Both of my kids responded well to our methods, and I have thankfully recovered from the trauma that I experienced during the process!

Our social worker told us that 10 days was a magic number for kids adjusting. I'm here to report that 10 days was sort of a "magic" number for us in terms of sleep for Levi. It marked the time when his sleep got worse instead of better. He is up from about 1 or 2 a.m. until about 5 a.m. Sometimes he's sleeping, other times he's crying or crawling around our bed. Either way, we were awake, trying to get him back to sleep. We know from his paperwork that he didn't sleep well in Korea either and we've spent 2 1/2 weeks trying to ease him into better sleep habits. When he woke up in the crib, we tried him in the bed. When that didn't work, we tried just one of us in bed with him. We considered that it might be food or reflux related, but when we talked to others about it, he didn't really have other symptoms of it. We tried letting him cry in the middle of the night for a little while only to discover that his ear infection had returned and, of course, we felt horrible. At which point we threw in the towel on the sleep training and put him back in our bed, where he continued to wake up and be awake for a long time in the middle of the night. We were lost. While we were genuinely concerned about making our son cry at night when he's been through so many changes, he and I were getting such bad sleep, I was beginning to loose the ability to function normally. I was waiting at an intersection to pull out onto a major road the other day, when an impatient driver behind me honked and gave me the "Just stick yourself out there gesture" (I could see her in the rear view mirror.) AndI responded in a way that only a sleep deprived mom can - I bawled. Luckily I was only a few minutes from home. But, it was my wake up call. (No pun intended).

That is how we turned to Dr. Ferber. Ferberizing him, is what I like to call it. Yesterday, I read Solve your Child's Sleep Problems by Richard Ferber. I reserved it at the library and when we had the "all-time worst night" on Tuesday night, I made sure to get it on Wednesday. It only takes reading a few chapters to get some really, really great information. After reading the first few chapters, I realized taht the kids in the book could have been Levi, they were that similar! I'm not going to go into detail about the book because (and let me be VERY clear about this), I would not recommend this for the average adoptive parents at 1 month into the process. In fact, I have wrestled with it myself - but in one night (count it!), I got a full nights sleep. I'm not sure if my body knows what to do with 8 hours! It did feed me truth I didn't want to hear too - that Levi is probably going to be getting up at 6 or 6:30 a.m. for a while, so I need to make sure to adjust my bedtime accordingly.

Levi continues to be a dream baby all day long. Even today, after he did some crying last night. He actually functions on little sleep much better than I do - a skill that will serve him well in his college years. :) I'll make sure to post after a couple of days to see if this sleeping solid thing actually sticks. Until then, sweet dreams!

1 comment:

Colleen said...

This is one of the things that worries me when the time comes for me to finally be a mom. I am a girl that NEEDS sleep! (and anyone that knows me will agree with this statement!!) I will keep this post in mind for advice from you if and when the time comes for me :)

I hope you and Levi continue to get a good nights sleep!!

(and gosh I really hate impatient drivers!!!)