December 7, 2011
Red Stuck Face
Raphael is going to be five months old tomorrow! Soon he’ll be toddling!
Raphael shortly before toppling over
I’ve been really busy over the last few weeks working on a grant application and am now happy to say it is done and submitted. Raphael had his first Thanksgiving, which we spent at the home of a friend. Raphael and I also caught our first daycare cold… and our second daycare cold… and are now working on a stubborn diaper rash (well, Tim and I are working on it, Raphael has it). Other than that though, things have been pretty good. On to the topic of this post!
The other day I was watching television while feeding Raphael, when something funny happened on the program I was watching. I laughed suddenly and a few seconds later realized Raphael wasn’t eating anymore. I looked down and saw a face that looked a little like this:
A few seconds after Red Stuck Face
Tim and I call this “the red stuck face” because his face goes bright red, his eyes squeeze shut, his mouth opens, and then there is total, complete stillness for a few seconds, before he lets loose an eardrum-rupturing wail of displeasure. We first saw Red Stuck Face when he had a round of vaccines at one month old. I thought, at the time, that Red Stuck Face must be reserved for only the most inexpressibly horrible moments, when Raphael is so overwhelmed by agony that his poor infant face muscles are briefly frozen in place with the force of his pain and suffering. Given that we only saw Red Stuck Face a handful of times over the first three months of his life, this may have been an accurate assessment. Whenever I see Red Stuck Face, I can’t help but feel some of his pain. The POOR BABY, I think, and hold him close, raining kisses all over his little face and head.
Over the last month however, although Raphael has generally been happy and good natured, we’ve been encountering Red Stuck Face more and more frequently. A few days ago, Red Stuck Face made an appearance when I laid him down in his crib for a nap. As if being put in his crib and forced to lie there and (perhaps) get a little bit of sleep was in some way similar to being stabbed with needles… At this point, I got the distinct feeling that Red Stuck Face was being used to manipulate me.
Let’s back up a little.
When we first brought Raphael home, I was a firm believer in not leaving one’s baby to “cry it out”. It seemed unjustifiably cruel… prioritizing one’s own comfort over one’s baby, ignoring true suffering, etc. I read about so called “attachment parenting”, based on the idea that being emotionally available to your child is critically important for forming secure bonds. One of the main rules of attachment parenting is that a crying baby is a suffering baby and the only way your baby will really trust you is if you respond to his/her cries every time. While a baby left to cry will eventually stop, its only because the baby has “given up” and over the long term you risk permanent damage to your baby’s fragile, developing psyche.
On the surface, I think this view is nice, and for many babies is a perfectly reasonable way to parent… but Raphael taught me (the hard way) that responding to your baby’s every cry isn’t always practical or compatible with maintaining sanity. I did some research and found that there is very little evidence that attachment parenting makes any difference in psychological outcomes, when compared to regular run-of-the-mill parenting practices. What does make a difference is the health and stress level of the parents and good sleep habits for baby. So, over the first few months, I gave up on attachment parenting and resolved to do my best, where my best sometimes means leaving him for 5-10 minutes to fuss and whimper so I can have lunch.
Fast forward to the present.
So now that Raphael is almost five months old, I find Red Stuck Face is being used in completely unreasonable situations, I suspect, because it pulls at my heart strings and gets an immediate reaction out of me. Raphael has been increasingly reluctant to take naps, despite the fact that he turns into an adrenaline-fueled, exhausted he-demon by the end of the evening, and was now clearly ready to avoid them by any means necessary. That was the point at which I decided, enough is enough, I am turning to the dark side, the thing I once thought I would never do — for the sake of his sleep, which lots of studies show *DOES* matter, weighed against the visceral but scientifically unsupported idea that crying too much will psychologically scar my child — I was going to let him CRY IT OUT.
On Monday, after a fairly good morning and early afternoon, I looked at the time and went upstairs to put him down for a nap. I would wait ONE HOUR. If he wasn’t asleep by the end of it, I’d go up and bring him back downstairs and try again another time. But I would not break. Even if he screamed like the roof was falling down, I was going to leave him in his crib (after glancing in to to make sure the roof wasn’t falling down) for the entire hour. It was like something out of a psychological thriller. There was Raphael, laying in his crib screaming his head off, and me, cowering at the bottom of the stairs, muscles knotted, sweating, watching the minutes pass by until I could end this awful experiment. Then at 55 minutes, there was silence. I crept upstairs and put my ear to the door and heard his light snores. HE WAS ASLEEP.
About 40 minutes later he woke up, refreshed and cheerful… almost too cheerful considering the suffering that I had just gone through. The rest of the evening he was in an irrepressibly good mood. All this time, I’ve been avoiding letting him Cry It Out when it may have been exactly what was needed. And to think, the final straw was seeing Red Stuck Face one too many times.
I will try to post before Christmas, but realistically, its possible that I won’t. If not, Merry Christmas everyone!
Recent pictures (I will continue to add to this album until he hits six months):
And seven new videos!
Raphael after a good day out:
Having fun on his exersaucer:
and
Drooling onto his bumbo chair:
After a particularly difficult meal (he’s been very distracted lately):
My efforts to document his compulsive rolling (see my last post from mid-November):
Finally, creepy baby noises in the dark:
Sarah Hope said,
December 17, 2011 at 12:27 pm
Love this baby.
Also, the crying it out stuff is painful and so necessary…you have to teach your kid to self-soothe. It’s emotion regulation training at it’s finest! Good for you for sticking it out!