Sleep Training

Sleep training a 9 month old is about as much fun as a colonoscopy prep.
I'm currently in the kitchen with the timer set for 5 minutes listening to my child wail.
Years ago, I read somewhere that in Guantanamo they would pipe in a recording of a baby screaming for hours on end. The unrelenting sound of a baby screaming is horrid. Its a function of evolution to respond. Quickly and with immediate comfort. To have to listen to a screaming baby for days on end would make me jump into an electrified fence.
That's kind of where I am now.
The problem is that this child does not sleep. For the last month he has been waking up every 2 hours every night. Like a newborn. Except as a newborn, he slept 6 hour stretches.
So for the last 4 weeks, I've been up all night with this overgrown newborn.
Fever, ear infections and enormous adenoids have all been taken care of.
It's time.

So as he screams and my neck muscles are tight and my jaw is set so hard it may crack- I'm letting him cry. It goes against every natural impulse of mine.
But sleep deprivation will make a bitch crazy. And willing to do anything for a 5 hour stretch of sleep.

It's been 10 minutes and there's no sign of him losing steam. If he was ever left alone in a jungle somewhere he would be OK because he would scream long enough for a mama orangutan to come save him. Then she would raise him and he would be fine. And then there'd be a great Phil Collins song at the end of his biopic movie.

Go to sleep Tarzan. Just GO TO SLEEP.