Tough Love

Tonight was a tough night on all. We realized that Carly was no longer sucking on her hand to soothe herself, but using our shoulder/shirt to do the job. (This used to be her sign for letting me know it was feeding time.) I decided I was tired of my shoulder being her pacifier so pulled her way and cradled her. This of course brought a few minutes of tears and then she just stopped and looked at me. Dave and I both started talking about moments recently when we thought maybe she was playing us with the tears.

Recently when I've been rocking her to sleep she will open her eyes, see that I'm still there, and then close them again. Then today at nap time she was asleep until I placed her in the crib. The crocodile tears started, so I went to pick her up. As soon as my hands were under her shoulders she stopped. She fell back asleep and I pulled my hands out and left her.

So after her last feeding tonight I started to carry her upstairs to rock her to sleep. She started sucking my shoulder again, so I cradled her and the tears began again. This time they continued for about 5 minutes when I just needed to put her down and walk away for a few moments. (She was shrieking REALLY, REALLY loudly.) Then the strangest thing happened. She screamed for about 5 minutes straight, and then started to calm down. There was an occasional scream, and I am sure the tears were streaming down her face, but after about 5 minutes of an occasional outburst she was asleep.

By typing and rereading tonight's events I feel like Dave and I were mean parents. However, we did watch her entire episode on the baby monitor (with the sound turned off since we could hear her) and I am sure it was a lot harder on us than it was on her. Plus I'm sure she will thank us for this one day. :-)