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Can Sleeping Pills Pass Through Breast Milk? Please?

So now that Cora’s officially 3
months old, I’m expecting her to get it together a bit in the
old sleep department. As soon as a kid turns that magic number,
everyone starts asking you – “Is she sleeping through
the night yet?” And I want to scream, “No! Leave me
alone! It’s not my fault!” You feel as if you’ve
got a defective kid, as all around you smug older parents are
telling you how their kid started sleeping through the night at 8
days old and never looked back.


They’re lying, by the way.


At any rate, Cora started sleeping for longer stretches a couple
weeks ago, going five or six hours at a time, and I thought
we’d have it easier with this one. But she’s begun
making life miserable for me and I’m about at my wit’s
end.



About a week ago Cora began getting up
every two hours or so again. Growth spurt, I told myself, so just
hang in there. These rough nights have been accompanied by better
naps, so it seems almost worth it; Cora’s been napping a
half-hour at a time, four times a day, but recently took a few 2 or
3 hour marathon naps. Not too bad, right?


But then two nights ago Cora started, well, not sleeping. She
sleeps just fine during the day – prop her in front of the
t.v. with a remote in her hand and she’s the spitting
sleeping image of my Uncle Doug after Thanksgiving dinner –
but has trouble descending into real sleep at night. I’ll
rock her, get her asleep, put her down, and five minutes later she
wakes up, frantic. I’ll place the pacifier in her mouth,
she’ll conk out, then wake five minutes later, frantic, when
it falls out. Repeat this for an hour and a half, and I’ll
eventually feed her. Five minutes into the feeding, she conks out,
I put her down, and so on.


This makes for some very long nights, and causes me no little
anxiety. We’re happy to use a pacifier for now (since
it’s better than using Mommy as a pacifier) but I’ve
heard horror stories of kids becoming addicted to them, and parents
having to get up several times a night as they fall out, for MONTHS
OR YEARS. Maddie is a thumb girl, and we’d be happy to have
Cora go that direction (and indeed she seems to be heading that
way) but we still have to swaddle her or she jerks herself awake,
so she can’t reach her thumb at night.


Hence the pacifier.


Anyway, last night was a killer, with Cora finally falling into a
good sleep at 7 a.m. And Maddie waking up at 8:30. As I got up this
morning, I had one thought: How can I get some sugar as fast as
possible, and how can I keep it coming all day long? And on top of
all of this is the typical parent guilt – that whatever
decisions I make now are going to affect her for the rest of her
life. Will this make for traumatic sleep-training in a few months?
Am I screwing her up by rocking her for hours until she sleeps,
thereby craving physical closeness as an adult? Tell me you
don’t have these same fears.


I know this is just a phase and that it’ll pass in a couple
days. I always think I’ll weather these things well, and then
right as I start to lose my sanity and scream it evens itself out.
So maybe this “scream” of a blog means she’ll be
better tonight.


Right? Just say yes. And send chocolate.

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