You know, babies just do whatever the hell they want. They just do stuff, and you just have to let them. With sleeping, this means that some nights, Little Miss Dottie Lu smiles when I place her in her crib and babbles herself to sleep. Other nights, she screams for 20 minutes and then wakes up every 45 minutes for the next three hours. There's no pattern. We can't predict what makes her do this. We make all kinds of assumptions. Her room is too hot. Her head itches. She's wet. She's hungry. Something smells weird.The fan is rotating in the wrong direction and the books on her bookshelf are not in the right order. Whatever it is, she can't tell us other than by crying and complaining, neither of which are very specific or helpful.
I don't like listening to my baby cry. It's horrible. But rocking her and cuddling her doesn't help either. When we rock her to sleep, she usually wakes up and screams as soon as we set her down. And if she happens to stay asleep in that moment, she wakes up 10 minutes later, probably wondering why she's not being cuddled and rocked anymore. I think it's a disservice to her that she wakes up alone when she went to sleep otherwise. And frankly, she wakes up smiling and happy every morning regardless. No hard feelings. So this is what we do for our baby. And we don't really have opinions about how other people put their babies to sleep, because I'm sure many parents are just as aimless and insecure as we are. I guess I just rest assured that we're doing the best we can, and Dot will be just fine, if only because she has dozens of people around her who love her intensely.
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