Lumpy sleep progress

It went ok for a few days and then it got bumpy again. All in all it's going well but he still really resists sleep. Bec had him going down for two long naps then a short nap and all was well. Yesterday he did two short ones then a long one, which stressed Bec out - not enough nap time means a crabby overtired Quinn. Today he woke up early (6am) but was still really tired, napped shortly thereafter for medium length for his first nap, and then really resisted going down the second time. Every day is another struggle with sleep.

Kids just don't know how to go to sleep when they're born. They don't show that part in the glossy brochures. It caught us by surprise and has dominated our life with Quinn for, well, just about 3 solid months now. Apparently some kids naturally take to sleeping. I don't have much to compare to, but I suspect Quinn is a worse-than-average sleeper.

I put him to bed using PU/PD last night for the first time. It actually went pretty well. He was asleep in 45 minutes but only about 15 minutes of that was crying, and even that wasn't strident. That was wayyyy better than I expected. It actually felt pretty good - like I was actually teaching him how to go to sleep. That's not to say it's going to be easy, but making an effort to try to teach him something is a philosophy that is much more liveable for all of us. At least that's the current theory. It's a continuous evolution.

Thirty years ago it was easier in one way, in that there really only was One Way and that was crying it out. Listening to crying would have been hard but since there only was One Way there was never any doubt about the approach and the only thing to do was Get Through It. It was like ripping off a band-aid. And millions of people turned out just fine this way, for the most part.

Today, like a communist-era Russian in a western supermarket for the first time, we're faced with a dizzying array of choices. Some are different ways to rip the band-aid off; some seek to avoid the wound requiring the band-aid in the first place (and make you feel guilty about incurring the wound requiring the band-aid in the first place); some are a mix. All tout scientific support; most of them conflict with one another; all trash-talk one another; and all of them are criticized by anyone from the One Way era.

But we want to do what's best for Quinn and our family as a whole - faced with choices that could possibly improve the quality of life of child and parents, what parent would not at least consider the choices? But what is valid and what is snake-oil? What will work for Quinn and what won't? What will work for us and what won't? We're left to try to find something that works for all involved by thinking through the sleep-deprived fog, where the problem definition changes seemingly daily, progress is inconsistent and the feedback is ambiguous. And oh yeah - inconsistency is even worse than pursuing a bad way to the end, so we need to get it right quickly.

It's easy to be overwhelmed by it all. In general in my life I'm trying to Do Something Right Now or Forget About It Until I Can. Right now he's been asleep for 49 minutes and that's not bad.