This is
an offshoot of my sketchbook.
Any opinions expressed are my own. At least I hope so.
Credit:
I've enjoyed Debbie Ohi's Blatherings
for years now. Anyone can debate about the merits and motivations for
creating an online journal, but I've come to realize that they can reinforce
in a very intimate way just how much we all have in common despite how
different we all are.
Mind you, I don't have any lofty goals; I'm just doing it for fun.
Monday June 25 , 2001
Sleeping Through the Night
We're trying to train the twins (Casey and Riley) to skip their 3 to 4 a.m. feeding. After discussing it with their doctor and having a lot of heated discussions of our own (with me resisting almost every step of the way), we've embarked on a program to get them sleeping through the majority of the night hours. Needless to say there's been a lot of crying for that extra couple of hours when they're used to getting a feeding.
I'm such a softie. I just can't handle their pitiful cries; so Paul has taken on the task of keeping an eye on them and comforting them periodically during those hours, while I chicken out in the other room trying not to hear them. If I was in there with them I'd _have_ to pick them up and fix it all. I hate the whole thing. I hate that I agreed to try it, I hate the seeming necessity of letting them cry, I hate feeling like an abusive mom because I'm ignoring their needs, and I hate the fear that we're teaching them that they can't trust us to be there. It makes me wonder how I'll find the strength for all those hard things coming later in their lives. I can't bear the thought of them having to endure all the pains and heartaches that we all go through.
And yet we're exhausted; we need more sleep, the doc says they're old enough, and the boys seem to show no ill effects during the day aside from taking a longer nap in the morning and eating more in the morning. It does seem to be starting to work, slowly. Riley is already falling back to sleep after crying for shorter periods, while Casey is the stubborn holdout so far. I'm hoping, hoping that he'll manage to figure it out too, because I can't take much more of this. And it's only been three nights.
Previous journal entries:
6/21/2001: Why Website?
