In my CTI Balance class I committed to starting a blog about
raising an adopted child and writing regularly. I jumped over a line to
demonstrate my sincerity separating it from the zillion other “I am going to do
this from now on..” statements. This was part of the change I wanted in my
life. Man, I suck. But! I also
committed to be gentle with myself. I have a tendency to take on too much and
beat myself silly for not being perfect at all of my aspirations. I have an
almost 6 mos old. That is my get out of jail card for the next two years!
So being gentle to myself and also trying to get back to my
commitments, here goes. Its been a tough two months but KJ has never been an
easy baby. We took him on his first vacation to altitude and wow that was a
disaster. After two nights of him literally being up ALL night, we cried uncle
and came home three days early. And how giddy we were to celebrate his four
hour increments of sleep at night. We were so very rested. Mind you this is the
child that at 12 weeks slept thru the night and has since lost his way.
Three days later, sleep training started. Four hour
increments weren’t enough. With our first son, cry it out (CIO) was shunned.
Maybe friends did it but no one admitted it. We were lucky. Our guy slept and
if he woke up during the night, he went right back down. This time around, CIO
seems to be the mantra. And not the go in every ten minutes and reassure the
child kind but the shut the door at 6:30 pm and don’t go back in until 6 am.
One friend told me her son cried for six hours. The first night, KJ cried for
almost two. DH snored and I chugged wine. But then he slept six hours, had a
bottle and slept three more. The next night he slept thru the night and a week
later, his naps lasted longer than 45 minutes.
Its still not perfect. He often wakes at 3 am and cries for
a good hour. I am not sleeping but I don’t get up. But bedtime isn’t the chore
it was a couple weeks ago. And best of all, we are all MUCH, MUCH happier. KJ
is truly the cutest little bugger and so darn active. Gone are the days of
leaving him under his playmat while I clean the dishes. Off he goes rolling
across the room!
And on the adoption front, we had our very last meeting our
social worker. Finalization will be late April or early May. Its hard to think
that legally we are still foster parents when our days are filled with sleep
training, cleaning bottles, introducing solids (KJ loves avocado!) and other
miscellaneous stuff. He is so very
much our son and MH’s brother!
Will try to update more regularly and discuss more of the
adoption issues and process. Not that I don’t think of it regularly, its just
hard to find that time to put fingers to keypad to make it happen.
