I've Become THAT Mother

We've (I've) spent the last three nights Ferberizing Charlotte. For those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Richard Feber, he's the authority on getting your child to sleep (no matter how it kills you), the idea being you'll be better off in the long run if you can just make it through a few painful nights listening to a howling infant. It's not cold turkey. Ferber bases his methods on intervals (let the baby cry for one minute then comfort her. Then let her cry three minutes, comfort her, then 5 minutes, then 10....).

Charlotte has begun associating her bottle with sleep, thus she now needs it in her mouth to fall asleep, and despite her tender age, you can imagine we're developing very bad sleep habits (up every hour for a nip or she can't fall back to sleep). Yeah, no thanks. So three nights ago I began training her to self-soothe sans bottle. She's doing great. I'm the one who's near collapse. Last night we did exceptionally well until 4 a.m. when she was up for nearly two hours crying. I spent that time comforting her and bracing myself against the wailing (she sleeps next to me in a co-sleeper). Paul slept with a pillow over his head.

Feber's methods worked great for Harry. In three days we had him sleeping through the night. Already charlotte has eshewed all but one nighttime feeding. But Lordy I am just wasted, so trashed that this morning, as Harry chucked his crayons around the kitchen and dumped his lunch on the dog's head (see photo of Alphabet pasta stuck in Typo's fur), I became THAT mother -- the one who plops her kid in front of the TV for a few episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine so that she can regroup. Both the kids are down for a nap and what I'd give for a glass of wine. I will have to settle for a caffiene free diet Coke. Oh the humanity.