Baby Sling

One issue we have with Grace his her constant desire to be held. She fusses alot. I wouldn't call it colic, because we can easily get her to stop crying by feeding her (remember she eats roughly 6 to 8 hours per day, or by holding her. Now I don't mind holding her when she's awake and alert, that's a good interaction time, but the problem comes in when she's asleep. She'll fall asleep in your arms and then when you lay her in the crib she'll wake up and scream until you pick her up again. This is making things difficult. During the day, I would like to nap or get some things done around the house while's she's asleep and at night...call me selfish, but I wouldn't mind sleeping a little too.

We've got lots of well meaning advise from friends and family telling us not to hold her so much, or to just let her cry, she's manipulating us, or that it's "good for babies to cry." However, everything I've read says that a baby her age can't manipulate us and we should go to her when she crys. The books say that babies that are held are less likely to be clingy, dependent children and adults and well be more independent. They are also supposed to cry less as infants, a reference was made to American Indian cultures where they carry the papooses around all day. The dependency thing is supposed to be because by responding to baby's cry, you are teaching her that you are there for her and will meet her needs, where if you let her cry she feels abandoned, so as they get older they will be more clingy if they felt abandoned as infants.

Anyway, I felt like I needed to do something, so yesterday while at Babies R Us, I bought a sling carrier to carry her around and free up my hands. We tried it out yesterday evening and it looks a little uncomfortable. However, today, she was fussy and had just ate, so I put her in it and within 30 seconds she stopped crying and fell asleep. It's wonderful. She's in it right now as I'm typing. So we'll see how this goes.

Now, I'm going to go try to put her in her crib while I sneak a shower in and maybe, just maybe she'll sleep long enough for me to get a nap in too. Last night was rough. She slept from 10:00 to 2:00 a.m. and then was up at 4:00 a.m. and only slept in 30 minute to 1 hour intervals from 5:00 to 9:00 a.m. Mommy is very sleepy.