Last year, my friend Alwynn wrote a journal entry about "Ferberizing" her son. I didn't know what it was, but I wondered if I should call CAS or something. It turned out to be the thing that saved her and her husband from having to sleep with their son for the rest of his life. I put it in the back of my mind, thinking that maybe some day, I'd need to know how to Ferberize my as-yet unborn child. Well, that day has arrived.

He's almost six months (as of Saturday) and I'm at my limit. I haven't slept through the night since November 6. NOVEMBER 6. The reason I hadn't tried it sooner was because of all the scary things I'd read and heard about it. Toronto Public Health treats it like child abuse. There are sites on the internet (that cater mostly to tree-hugging crunchy granolas like myself) that make it out to be a demonic activity that proves to your child that you just don't love him. I had read several others books as well that seemed to advocate a much kinder approach to sleep training. Well you know what? NONE OF IT WORKED. And I finally got to the end of my rope and asked Alwynn if I could borrow her book. She sent it to me in the mail. The first chapter is called "At the end of my rope". I knew I'd stumbled onto something important.

Last night was our first night. Not fantastic, but not so bad, you know? Josh cried for about an hour when I first put him down, but I went in and comforted him in the specified intervals and eventually, he went to sleep. He woke up at 10:30 and I gave him a bottle as I typically do, because I didn't want him to go from nursing all night to absolutely nothing. Then the roughest patch was at 3:15 (until 4:45 a.m.) but he did go back to sleep until 6:45 this morning. Hopefully this will improve as we continue to follow the guidelines Dr. Ferber has developed. I can't go back to work on such little sleep, and if it's going to take him a month to really learn it, I want to have that firmly in place before trying to take on my job in the daytime.

In other news, I listened to a lot of Sheryl Crow yesterday. Most of her songs got me in some way or another (A change would do you good, are you strong enough to be my man, you're my favourite mistake, etc.) but when I heard the duet, "The Difficult Kind" with Sarah McLachlan, I kind of lost it for awhile. "Tell it to me slow, tell me with your eyes. If anyone should know how to let it slide... I swear I can see you coming up the drive, and there ain't nothing like regret to remind you you're alive. If you could only see what love has made of me, then I'd no longer be in your mind the difficult kind, 'cause babe I've changed." Knives, man. Knives.

So, today, it's back to Ferber and maybe some Stevie Wonder instead.