Rockabye Baby for f-sake!

We’re off to Masada sleep school in two weeks time and I’m so happy. In fact probably happier than if I was going to Fiji on a luxury all expenses paid holiday. The truth is I am knackered and grumpy all of the time. Poor Jake gets the brunt of it, generally when we are having our nightly stand off about him eating his dinner. I hear the same words coming from my mouth as I did from my mothers' about children starving in Africa.

Sleep is as important as food in this world of ours and while I manage to consume plenty of the latter not much of the former is happening. Whoever made the connection between having a good night’s sleep and sleeping like a baby was joking right?  Not all babies sleep and it is a skill they need to learn. We are supposed to teach them but it isn’t that easy. My beautiful baby seems to think he can suck me dry every ninety minutes throughout the night and yes I have tried patting, rocking, singing etc

At the end of the day you just do what works in order to get some sleep. So i knock him out by putting him on the boob- I swear this child is a milkaholic!

You make excuses for them- “oh it’s their teeth”, “They’ve got a cold”, “They had a bad day on the stock market”. You don’t want to admit there is a problem because maybe that means you are failing at this parenthood malarkey.

Controlled crying is all very well if you don’t mind hearing your child scream every night or if you’ve invested in a good pair of earplugs.  We tried it with Jake but he just used to make himself sick or do a big poo- both were effective in us caving in. I took Jake to Tweddle for a day session, I was really hoping they would see how bad he was and admit us in to their residential program. They didn’t and he was the only child at the end of the day that didn’t sleep. All of the parents sat in a central room whilst their babies’ screamed- it was terrible. Jake was standing by that point and I could hear him rattling the bars of the cot. It was a useless exercise because we really needed to stay the night and they just sent us home regardless. I am hoping this time will be different.