bye bye, sleep lady

I took the book back. I exchanged it for a new story book for the boy about a hibernating bear and bought a copy of "Where the Wild Things Are" to be donated to a kids' reading program.

I think this was a good idea.

The Sleep Lady was pissing me off.

It's not going to work for me, and I'm not going to do it. Letting him wail while I watched was terrible, and I think, confusing for him.

The more I thought about it, the more I decided she was full of crap. At least for me. It may well work for loads of parents, and she's made a ton of money off of it, but she will forever be "Sleep Barbie" for me just because of the picture on the back of her book. Her comments about having her daughters sleep for eight hours by the time they were eight and ten weeks old with the "and yes, I breastfed both of them," strike me as snarky, and most of the reading I have done has said that babies that young are not supposed to sleep that long. I also got tired of her looking down her nose at AP-ers and co-sleepers, even as she tried to say that she is open minded. She's not. Again, we are not parenting by any book, but I don't need to take advice from someone who clearly thinks that we are kind of dumb for letting our baby into our bed.

So screw her.

And pretty much, screw all of it.

I am back to where I always have been: he will probably not sleep through the night until sometime after he is weaned, and it does not mean that he has a problem. We have been progressing with getting him into a routine, and things have improved. If he still needs me in the middle of the night, then he still needs me. I'm his mother. It's too bad that evolution has not caught up with our stupid schedules, but there you have it. I don't think that letting him scream, with or without me, is going to make anything better, and I don't want to do it.

After all, very little of the sleep advice out there has anything to say about premature babies, and as far as I can tell, no one has looked into the long-term effects of hospital stays on the sleep patterns of babies. Finn was jostled and prodded every three hours for his entire third trimester. Now he never sleeps much longer than three hours at a stretch. It could be a coincidence, but as long as everyone is putting thoughts into my baby's head and making all sorts of other pronouncements, I'll just add that one to the mix.

Last night, we did a bath at 7:00, then a night-time boob snack during which I read "The Cat in the Hat," then a little crib play time, and Pete took over. He was alseep by 7:47, and would have slept until a little after midnight if Pete had not decide to go in at 9:31 and get some laundry to fold. Even then, the boy was back to sleep in 13 minutes. Yes, I keep track that much. I heard him at 3:00 and then at 4:00, I went and got him. He nursed and then we slept until 7:15. Or, he did. The old cat woke me up, meowing for breakfast.

I don't need a book by someone who is not a sleep expert making me feel bad for not letting my baby learn how to sleep, which is what she thinks you are doing if you don't do what she says. I need to listen to how I feel and listen to what Finn is telling me.