On Becoming Babywise

I keep beginning this post and then deleting it for some reason. Because I have so much that I want to write about it that I just get overwhelmed and quit without saving the draft.

The week before I went back to work Brantley and I worked on getting him on a schedule. I heard about Babywise from a friend and decided to look in to it. There were TONS of opinions on the internet. Everyone had an opinion on it and whether it was good or bad, the opinions were strong both ways. People either LOVED it or HATED it. I rarely found a middle ground in reading reviews of the book. I went ahead and committed to buying the book. I figured whatever, I'd try it for a week and I couldn't screw him up that bad in a week if it didn't work well for us. If it didn't work I'd only be out approximately 13 bucks and a weeks worth of work.

Our "routine" before reading this book looked something like this:
- Up almost every 3 hours at night to eat. Once he ate he was passed out to sleep another 3 hours. But the 3 hour routine was wearing me out.
- Wake up around seven o'clock, change him, feed him, put him in his swing in the living room so I could fall back to sleep on the sofa while he would eventually go back to sleep swinging.
- He'd sleep til almost eleven and so would I. Half the day would be gone by the time I felt like I had somewhat caught up on sleep and could peel myself off the couch to start the day (at eleven o'clock).
- By mid afternoon he'd be cranky. We would be on our way to my mom's work for lunch or to Kohl's to shop or the grocery store and I'd hold my breath for what kind of mood would follow. There was a grocery store run that he started screaming in and it was everything I had not to abandon my buggy and head for the car. I stuck it out, got most of what I needed to make dinner, left, and decided I'd come back when Craig got home and could watch him.
- Rocking him to sleep every night, sometimes for an hour, just to get him to get tired, and slowly placing him in his crib so he didn't wake up and we'd have to start it all over again. And if he did wake up, he'd cry until we rocked him back to sleep to try again.

Babywise has made Brantley a happier baby and me a much more confident mom. I know what to expect from him and he knows what to expect from me. I know when the best times for meeting friends for dinner are. I know the best times to take a longer car ride than normal. The book mentioned that this schedule made your life more flexible. When I first starting reading the book I thought - how can this be flexible? It seems so rigid and structured. But it is completely flexible.

The hardest part was letting him cry it out in the beginning. I wasn't too crazy about it and it physically made me hurt to listen to it. But we had an end goal and I was determined to see it through. Everyone has an opinion on that, too. So I double checked with my pediatrician and she assured me that as long as he was fed, changed, and not sick to go for it. Before we started Babywise we would rock him to sleep every night til he was completely out of it and hold our breath while we laid him in his crib in hopes that he stayed asleep. Now we rock him because we want to hold him and love on him. Not stressed and tired and wishing him to fall asleep. When we are done rocking him we put him in his crib awake (but drowsy) and he puts himself to sleep with little fussing. I feel like this is an important skill for him to have all throughout his childhood.