Sleeping Improvements

All of the adoption books say to be prepared for sleep issues.  When a child's entire life is turned upside down by moving him into a new home, expect that he may have difficulty sleeping at first.  This never really applied to my son.  He goes to sleep easily and sleeps soundly through the night.

But my girl, on the other hand, has struggled with sleep ever since she moved in.  At first she didn't want to even go to sleep at all.  We tried everything from rocking to sleep with a bottle to swinging her in a chair to driving around with her in a car seat... there was nothing that consistently worked.  Not only did she give tremendous resistance to going to sleep, but she would wake up several times each night and would stand up in her crib and cry.  This was extremely distressing for me because I just didn't know what she wanted or needed.  Was she hungry?  Sad?  Scared?  Sick?  In pain?  Missing her abuela?

The books also advise that your friends who haven't read any adoption books will offer plenty of unsolicited advice that may or may not be good for adopted children.  Specifically in this situation, they may suggest that you let your child cry it out.  "Crying it out" (CIO) is a hotly debated technique for getting a child to sleep that involves ignoring your child's cries for hours, if need be, and simply waiting until they drop from sheer exhaustion.  After two or three nights of this, they say, the child will learn that she cannot manipulate her parents with her crying and will gracefully accept bedtime and simply go to sleep when placed in her crib.

On the other side of this debate, the argument is that crying is a child's means of communication and not a form of manipulation.  Particularly with a pre-verbal child, crying may be her only way to express herself.   CIO teaches a child that she can't count on her caregiver to meet her needs, and that trying to communicate is futile.  With adopted children, this is exactly the wrong message we want to send, especially in those first few months and years of building a relationship and attachment to the children.

My heart and my instinct told me it would be wrong to allow Victoria to CIO.  So every night, I wake up and comfort her when she cries.  I bring her into my bed if I have to.  I give her milk if she asks for it.  I bought her a soft, snuggly blanket to sleep with, so she can comfort and soothe herself when she needs to.  I rock her to sleep every night.  Dave helps too, when I am too exhausted to function.  I'm sure I could find plenty of experts who would say these are all the wrong things to do, but what we have done and are doing is working.

Victoria has slept through the night for two nights in a row now.  When I rock her to sleep, she allows herself to fall into a deep sleep, so that I can stand up from my chair and gently lower her into her bed.  In the past, any type of movement like this would awaken her and cause her to cry.  I think she was on a heightened state of alertness, like an animal of prey who never quite sleeps fully.  Now she is letting her guard down and feels that she can trust us.  I believe that this trust comes from us coming to her every night and letting her know that when she needs us, we will be there for her.  I'm doing my best to be a good mother to my children and it's not always easy.  Sometimes I question my own judgment about the decisions I make, and sometimes I feel that I might never live up to my own ideals.  But about this sleeping thing, I feel pretty good about the choices I've made.  I'm proud of myself for this.

My children are sleeping now and in a few short moments, I will be too.