Love and weakness...

So, the strategy... Easier said than bloody well done. That's my verdict!

The night started smoothly. I fed him and left him to self-settle, which he did without a sound. Amazing!! But when he woke at 10:30 for a feed — he was 'asleep', but crying, and seemed hungry — he was impossible to get back down. He screamed and screamed. Phil did his very best. But how do you go on when your baby is crying so forcefully and with such desperation that there are pools of tears in the crevices of his little ears? I couldn't do it. We couldn't do it.

I did manage to hold off with the feeds though. He's not having any milk between 10 and 5. That part seems to be working, and he IS waking less frequently. But he's still in with us, which I honestly do not mind one little bit. I just love his sleepy face, his milky breath on me all night, his body folded up against mine. It's heaven.

I am working on getting him to self-settle during the day, it's a battle. It's so frustrating! To think he could do this with hardly any fuss, only a month ago. Yesterday I had PMS, and was feeling oh-so-irritable... It really broke me. It's the control thing again. I canNOT control him. I can guide him, I can try to teach him, but he's an individual person, a very separate entity with his own ideas, his own plan.

I have decided to stop beating myself up about all this. Sleep is threatening to take over my life — not the act itself, but the the thinking about it, the planning and plotting and strategising. It's crazy! Who really cares?

I feel such immense love for him that I cannot bear to see him sad, the sound of his screams just pains me, it kills me. I keep telling myself to be strong, to be tough, but when it comes to my Otis I am the weakest of the weak.