I am turning to Anna’s forum as I can’t seem to understand what we are doing wrong with our little boy.
Matti, 11 months, has been cured following GNS 4 months ago. He used to wake up 3-4 times a night.
When Matti occasionally wakes up and cries, with the baby phone handy, we throw a jingle to reassure him. He often sits and takes a sip of water using a sippy cup and then falls back asleep.
Matti has been sick for the last 4 days. He wakes up around 1.00 AM and sleeps intermittently until 6.40ish. I am unsure if the relapse is caused by his sickness or not.
When he cries, we usually do the following in order: we jingle 1 time or more if needed (max 3 or 4 times), we go inside if it worsens, propose him water, buff him (5 sets with 4 taps each set), fan for a few seconds and finally jingle times 4 on our way back.
We repeated the steps above several times per night for the past few days. Without success. Matti keeps crying as soon as we leave the room, he calms down after a few seconds/minutes, then goes on and on until he is yelling his head off.
For the last 2 days, after hours of repeating the process above, we ended up buffing him until he falls asleep (~ 5 AM). I didn't even dare to throw an exit jingle yesterday. I was afraid to wake him up. We never picked him up though.
In the Q&A section "Comforting sick children", Anna says: "You can bend down and hold her. You can give her water, cool her down with a compress and calm her.". To what point should we "bend down and hold her"? A few seconds? minutes?
The mistakes I believe we have made;
- - Stick around for too long since Matti is sick. Like Anna says, the battle with the wolf needs to be fought outside of the room, not inside. “Every time you get stuck in that proverbial rut and hang around, the wolf sticks his slavering jaws through the door. Then you are the one who is posing the danger to public safety. Think about that!”
- - I may have overused the jingle. I jingle as soon as Matti starts crying. I believe this irritates him more than reassuring him. Per explained in Anna’s analogy at the restaurant; “Does it taste good? Is the beef too rare? Too well done? Too cold? Too hot?”. I just don’t want to let him escalate his cries to the point where I have to go inside.
- - Get him to used to be buffed. If we have to inside, we always buff him. I believe we are not supposed to. But what's the point to go inside if you can't buff him? Should we only fan him and get out ASAP?
Any recommendations are welcome.
Thanks a lot,
Andrew