Self soothing woes

Have you ever noticed how its easier to allow a baby to self sooth when you only have one child?

I mean...it's never easy to hear your baby cry and self soothing require tears.
On moms end as well add baby's end.

How does a parent strike that balance?

I mean, she's my baby.

Yes, I know she's not a BABY, I mean, just look at her…she's a little person with all that personality and chutzpah! Yeah, I just went Jewish there for a sec.

But she's my baby.
I mean, O is still my baby and she's 3. They will both ALWAYS be my babies.

A friend recently made me feel a little bad about calling her my baby. She has a real negative connotation of 'the baby' Although she has never really said it, I think there was some family tension where that is concerned.
But I don't mean, I will treat her like a baby and I don't...with the exception of the crying in the middle of the night thing…that is the worst time for teaching that self soothing disaster.

Cause:

1. You don't want to hear a crying baby at 3am
2. You don't want that crying baby to wake up the older sibling
3. I want the crying to stop so I can go back to sleep...yes that is the real reason

It's really all about me.

I can't stand to hear her cry—it hurts my heart, literally...I get a pain in my chest.

I REALLY don't want to have to deal with two awake children at 3 in the morning.

It takes me forever to fall back asleep the longer this whole crying/self soothing situation takes place. 

Honestly, I think there's something wrong with me.

My brain is broken, cause once I start thinking...it's all over. I might as well just get up and bake some cookies or do laundry cause I am not falling back asleep.

Which is also compounded by the fact that my husband is snoring 1 minute after getting back into bed. In those moments, I hate him.

So all that being said—we don't let her cry herself back to sleep at 3am. Usually my husband—because he realizes I can't get back to sleep if I'm up too long in the middle of the night—takes one for the team (I love him for that). Don't judge, I'm one of those "work outside the home" moms who takes care of the majority of dirty baby work. He can get up and rock the little stinker back to sleep and then fall asleep during that process (I have seen him do that) and the crawl back into bed and fall back asleep.

Although earlier this week was horrible. She woke up every hour starting at 12:45. After the 3rd wakeup call from little Miss E, we just put her in bed with us. Which I hate and usually can't sleep when she's in bed with us, I'm deathly afraid one of us will roll over onto her and suffocate her. You've heard the stories right?

My husband has no such fear. He has fallen asleep with her (and our oldest when she was younger) all the time.

Well we were at our wits end and willing to try anything.

And then 2 hours of blissful sleep until the stupid alarm went off at 5:45...which E slept though.

If I didn't love her so much I'd call her a little bitch.