Hubby and I were initially clueless as to why he kept crying. We tried to ease him of all possible discomfort... even after all that, he continued to cry.. and we could tell he was crying in protest. We did what we used to do during his sleep training phase, that was to go into his room to comfort him in intervals...we did that many times over the 2 hours but still he went on and on...
My instincts and his behavior told me that he wanted to be nursed even though he was not hungry. That's the weird part.. he has always been self-soothing to sleep.. he sucks his left thumb.. but for some reason.. he wanted to be nursed... and when I tried to give him his thumb, he would shove my hand aside.
The battle between us and him went on and on and on...until we decided that we may have to spank him to get he message across to him. That was a difficult decision because afterall, Joshua's only 7 months old. Most people would say infants at this age are too young for that. But we remembered that Candra was spanked even earlier when she too gave us sleep problems and it worked for her. So that made us consider doing the same for Joshua.
After praying and hearing him protest for 2 whole hours with hard crying, we finally decided to do it. Hubby spanked him once, he cried even harder..then he looked to me....and I knew I had to spank him again. When we left the room, he continued to cry.. but the crying was less intense and we felt there was a change of heart..and shortly thereafter... silence... our boy got the message and decided to give up.
Maybe some would feel that I was being cruel to him because nursing him would have avoided all that crying... but to me, giving in this once equates to cultivating a new habit which may encourage unnecessary night-waking... moreover, he has proven himself to be able to sleep on his own for the last 4 months at least.
This boy is strong... I knew that from his 8 weeks of sleep and routine training.. but this time round, I felt it even more strongly.
May God have mercy on us and on this boy especially... I cried so hard while praying for him with hubby throughout the whole process..
God trains us while we train our children...
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