Guilty

At Ryan's 4 month appointment the subject of him not sleeping through the night came up. Basically, I haven't slept for 4 months and it has really been wearing down on me. As much as I love Ryan I knew the time had come where we would probably have to let him cry it out a little. I have been dreading this and was praying he would just learn it on his own. So, Sunday night came and we decided to stick to it. We were both on board for a long night. He usually goes down between 9 and 10 with no problems but then he's up between 2 and 5 times wanting who knows what! He cried for 2 minutes when we put him down. He was up at 1:37 crying. Gave him "loves" and cried till 1:54. Not too bad. I didn't get back to sleep until 3:30. Then he was up at 3:56 and cried till 4:10. OK not too bad...we thought it was going to be 20 times worse. Then he was up at 5:15 and I decided that was a pretty long time{for him} without food so I fed him and he went back to sleep until 8:00. I went in and got him out of bed and put him on the changing table and I noticed his left eye would not open. It was all red and swollen and very watery. I called the pediatrician but they weren't in yet so I left a message. After a couple of hours from not hearing anything I called back and asked if I could just make an appointment. She said the next one wasn't until 4:20. I figured that was better than never. I thought maybe it was pink eye and I was trying to think if he was around anyone recently that I knew who had had pink eye. The receptionist called me back 30 min. later and said they had an appointment at 10:40. I was so grateful! Of course Ryan was sleeping but I decided I better take him in. I am sooo glad I did. I didn't even have to wait very long to see the Dr. either. I felt kind of dumb since I had just been there exactly a week earlier, but so what! I started telling him that we let him cry to sleep and he said, "So, are you and your husband speaking to each other this morning?" It was funny. After a series of questions he said it wasn't pink eye and then asked the M.A. to get the eye kit. He put some dye in Ryan's eye and then shined a black light over it. While he's doing this he says,"This will tell us if he has scratched his eyeball and if so it is quite painful, even for adults." I lost it when I saw three, yes 3 large scratches on his eye. I FELT SOO GUILTY! He reasured me that this could have happened even if we weren't letting him cry. They just don't have complete control over their hands yet. We have to put this RX ointment on it twice a day.(not an easy task!)Well, needless to say he has been sleeping with socks on his hands for a week.
Next issue:
They say if you're going to let them cry you have to stick to it for a couple of days or you'll have to start all over. You can imagine our dilemma! We gave him a little bit of rice cereal and a normal feeding and he did pretty good. He only woke up once and went right back to sleep. Yeah!! He has been doing that for the last couple of nights. Knock on wood.

I'm soo glad he will never remember this! Except for maybe when he's 5 and says, "Mom, why can't I see out of my left eye?" Oh, I don't even WANT to think about that. I love this little guy!