Saying goodbye to our littlest son seems unreal...it hardly feels real at all. Perhaps because the entire pregnacy was hard to process or maybe because it wasn't public knowledge. I was trying to process a lot of guilt because I didn't feel like I was grieving enough. Why don't I feel more upset?!? My therapist told me to go easy in myself because in a way I had started the grieving process before he was actually gone. I already started grieving the loss if a chance at "normal" and prepared myself ahead if time for the worse case scenario, just in case.
I still feel a little disconnected but will work through it eventually. Mainly I am fighting to stay social. Phone calls are unreturned, I rarely read blogs or check Instagram or even go on to FB. I hysterical can't summon the interest half the time and the other half is prioritized for Maxwell.
Grief is weird...and sucks.
I think pulling away from social stuff makes sense and may be necessary for a little while. If grief does anything good, it focuses our priorities in a really specific way, and if that means tuning out most stuff that's not Maxwell, then that's okay.
ReplyDeleteAs for sleep training, we did a sort of modified version of it. I'd let Zuzu cry for 2-5 minutes, judging whether it was going to escalate or calm down. If she wasn't calming, I'd go in and give her a binky and settle her back in her crib and leave again. Give it another 2-5 minutes, and do the same. Sometimes I'd pick her up out of the crib to settle her, but I always put her back down before she was asleep. The longest I ever let her fuss was 10 minutes and I could barely handle it. (I found it easiest to go to a task--like fold a load of laundry--and then come back and check on her). Most of the time, though, she'd cry 5 minutes, I'd check on her, she'd cry 30 seconds, then she'd be asleep. But it took a week for her to settle without crying. The month of June was not fun for us--I spent the weeks after Chicago trying to get her to go to sleep without crying and thought it would never happen. But now she sleeps well and if she fusses at bedtime it's 30 seconds or less. So I hated life in June but I'd say it was worth it AND I never felt like I had to make her "cry it out."
Teeth are a whole different ballgame, though. I'd give her baby tylenol before bed if they really seemed to be bothering her. That worked for us.
Grief sucks. period. I agree with Brooke on both counts, pulling away from the social stuff is sometimes needed. And that's kind of how I got both of my babies on track with sleeping... set a time, if they haven't calmed in so long.. then I'll go in, if by that time it sounds like they're slowing down (long pauses between the cries) I may bump the amount of time up by a few minutes.
ReplyDeleteSending hugs your way.