The beat goes on

The sleep training has begun in earnest. Da da da DUM.

I hear tell that it's been going well. Why don't I know firsthand? Because I couldn't hack it. Couldn't even make it through the first evening. Ended up in tears before we even got to the first bedtime and was a basket case by the time it really was time for bed, so I was banished by my incredibly supportive, long-suffering, and currently sleep-deprived husband. He offered to send me to a hotel or to take me to a friend's house, but I felt ridiculous already, so I opted for shutting myself in our bedroom, on the other side of the house from the nursery and the guest room, aka mission central, and turning on a fan to drown out the noise during the night. During the day, I went to the cannery in Columbia (it was virtuous avoidance) and got lost coming home (inadvertently) and so was gone for the daytime training today as well.

Apparently, it was rough. I woke up at 12:30am, and the baby was asleep and had been for awhile and things seemed calm, so I mistakenly turned off the fan. But he had fought hard every time he went down. I then woke up at 1:30am to hear baby crying, and, since the husband had told me earlier that Jacob was due to eat at 1:30, I swooped in and took him out of the pack-n-play and fed him, most likely a little early, but I couldn't help it. I then had to leave again as soon as I was done nursing because I couldn't bear to put him down. I came back at 6:30am to find calmly sleeping baby and snoring husband, who told me the baby had gone asleep sometime around 4:30am after much fighting and crying. Jacob woke back up at 7am before it was time and the husband just put him in his swing rather than fight again and I left at 7:30am. I called at 9am to see how things were going and the baby was still (!!!) asleep. He hadn't eaten in over four hours at that point and he's too small for such a thing, so the husband woke him up and began the day's training, which went less well. Apparently, Jacob refuses the crib at all during the day when there are distractions, so the swing was the only place that worked. And the husband himself had a breakdown in the afternoon after trying to insist on the crib, so the swing won.

But really, I am so happy the husband made it as long as he did because I really couldn't...and still can't. Supposedly, things generally get better after three days, and I will have to relieve the husband soon since he's running on fumes. But I am not that brave yet. It's too hard, and I'm just a sometime spectator right now., gosh darn it! Sleep training is like Survivor: outwit, outlast, outplay, emphasis on outlast.