Hello!
I have a 4 week old who has been sleeping like an angel up until the last 3 days. Her night sleeping is fabulous. She sleeps about 6 hours from her last feed (anywhere between 9/10) and then goes directly back to sleep (even if she's wide awake) and I wake her up at 8 every morning. I typically put her back down by 9, no later. I've followed her cues, I've kept the routine consistent, but I just spent 45 minutes in the room with her and she NEVER fell asleep. She doesn't fuss, just doesn't fall asleep. The only reason I had 45 minutes to devote was because my husband is home today. I also have a spirited toddler, so typically this will be out of the question. I may be able to hold him off for 20 minutes, but not a second longer. I was willing to stay in the room for 20 minutes, just like Tracy talks about in her book and in the sleep interview, but I can't do it any more. She talks about getting someone to help-I don't have anyone to help. When my mom's around her solution is to just rock her-which she's trying to help, but this frustrates me even more because this is exactly what I'm trying to avoid.
Previously Annika would go down easily for sleeps and sleep 3 hours at a time, now, even if she does fall asleep she wakes at the 45 minute mark and she may or may not go back to sleep.
I had this same problem with my son, only his dispostion wasn't quite as pleasant so it made it more frustrating. However, I'm already getting extremely frustrated and find myself crying. At this point my husband has taken over (for the last 20 minutes) and it still isn't working. I know you're not supposed to switch people either, but I had to. I also know that Tracy said that if is hasn't worked after 40 minutes to take them out of the room for 20 and start over, here again, I have the problem of another child to worry about-this just isn't feasible!
This really never worked for Luke and he eventually became a good sleeper and slept on his own. I guess this is where I become skeptical of the whole process (and I know that many of you have had success), but who has time for this! I just end up driving myself crazy over the whole thing! It's tempting to let her cry it out a bit because this just isn't working! What do I do? It just seems that my friends who wing it don't have this trouble and their kids eventually come around and they never sweat it-they are on the go all the time and their kids sleep wherever, whenever with no problems and everyone is fine.
I'm sorry, I'm just negative right now because I'm frustrated-any helpful words or encouragement-I'm definitely ready to "cave-in". Please help me!!!
Thanks!