I love snuggling with my baby! Who doesn’t? Until it became a little bit of a problem…. We (and Ben) had gotten so used to rocking him to sleep, we would sometimes spend an hour or two getting him to sleep for a nap or in the middle of the night. For many months, he would go to sleep at 7 and sleep until 2, wake up, eat, then right back to sleep until 5 or 6, and then it was time to start the day. He was taking maybe 45 minute naps, 90 minutes on a good day, three times during the day. This was okay and it worked for me, so I didn’t think there was any need to do any of the “sleep training” I kept reading about. Then, we had family in town and let them babysit in the evening a couple of times and he started fighting bed time and wanted to stay awake after the 2am feeding. Not cool.
I hadn’t ever heard about sleep training until I went to a mommy lunch at the hospital when Ben was 2 months old. One of the other moms talked about how she had started sleep training and her 2 month old was sleeping 8 hour stretches at night and 7 hours during the day through 2-3 naps. Whoa… that’s a lot of sleep. From then on I read articles on the various baby sites about sleep training. Man, is this topic controversial or what? For weeks I mulled over whether or not I need to do it and which strategy was best. Cry, no cry, some cry, sleep schedule vs routine… etc. I also started to talk to my other mom friends and a couple of them recommended the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Dr. Weissbluth. I checked it out online from the library, but I only had a week to read it. The first time I read it, I only got through a chapter and a half. All I got from it was that you should have an earlier bedtime than you think (6-7pm) and you should try to catch your child when they are showing the first cues of sleepiness and not wait until they are crying. We started trying this and it was nice to have a few hours to ourselves in the evenings, but he still took short naps and needed to be rocked to sleep. Then the family came and messed everything up! Thanks a lot Grandma!
After three nights of him fighting sleep at 2am, I decided we need to intervene. I had gotten the chance to check out the book again, and I read this http://cabernetandbreastmilk.com/2013/12/06/the-cliff-notes-version-of-sleep-training/. I asked my mommy group on Facebook what methods they had tried and many said they hated CIO and did The No Cry Sleep Method or The Sleep Lady Shuffle. I didn’t have time to wait for those books to arrive in the mail, so I opted for CIO. We didn’t read the book (Ferber, and this was probably a mistake), and wanted it to be quick, like tearing off a bandaid. We started it on a whim one evening when we put him to bed and he woke up every 30 minutes for two hours. That was the final straw.
I lasted about 20 minutes of hard crying. I went up to soothe him three times (3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, never made it to 10 that night). I just. couldn’t. take. it. I now know the meaning of the phrase “heart wrenching”. My heart literally hurt. A mom knows the difference between the fuss cry and the “I’m in pain” cry, and he was definitely feeling it. Instead of giving him his pacifier on the third time, I just picked him up and snuggled him so hard. My husband came up after I was already supposed to be back downstairs and was furious that I had picked him up. He was afraid we had ruined the training already. I wasn’t so sure. I fed him and put him back to sleep and he slept until 2 am, ate, and went right back to sleep.
My goal with the sleep training was not to eliminate all night wakings, it was really to get him to be able to fall asleep on his own. I wanted to be able to put him down after his night feeding and not worry about him waking up. I figured if he could put himself back to sleep, he would only wake up when he was truly hungry. We debated whether or not to break his swaddle habit at the same time. We decided it would be too hard for him to do both (kind of like taking away an addict’s drugs cold turkey, IMO). I also reasoned that him needing to be swaddled, doesn’t bother me, but if he wakes up every time he gets out of it, then it’s a problem. Maybe if he learns to put himself back to sleep, being out of the swaddle won’t mean an immediate wake up.
The next day we talked and decided we still needed to do this, but that if one of us couldn’t handle it, we could stop and try something else. We also agreed to be Sleep Nazis. We would do everything we could to keep his routine going and keep a regular bed time and not interfere with naps, even if that meant that we stayed around the house a little more. If he sleeps better, we sleep better, and everyone is much happier, right? I still felt so guilty about making him cry. After all, it was my fault that he needed to be rocked to sleep, right? I’m the one who got him into the habit, so why does he have to suffer too? No matter what justifications sites or books told me, I still felt (and still feel) guilty about this. He will always have a sympathy card from me until he is 18!
Day 2, we decided, was really Day 1 again. We started with naps. I would recommend this, since crying is much easier to deal with when you can do something else to distract yourself and you are not already exhausted. He fought the first nap, and cried for the 30 minute allotment. The second nap he slept for 4 hours! Holy cow! I was beginning to get fearful for the night time as we were approaching 3pm at this point. Then, he fought the third nap and cried on and off for 30 minutes until he could get out of his crib. We got him ready for bed at 5:30-6:00ish and he slept all the way until 1:30am. As we lay down to sleep that night, my heart was racing. I was dreading him waking up, and having to listen to him cry. I was planning what chores I could get done while he cried, because I sure as heck wasn’t going to be sleeping. But, he ate and went right back to sleep. We began feeding him in his bedroom with the lights off and the sound machine on, instead of in front of the TV or in the bedroom with a light on while I pumped. I credit this to our success too. He woke up at 5, ate, and went back to sleep. Day 1 was a success.
Day 2 was a weekday, so I was by myself. His first nap he slept for his usual 45 minutes. I went up to give him his pacifier and he was wide awake, so I decided that was okay for the first nap. The second nap he slept for 30 minutes, then woke up, and I checked on him in intervals for the next 30 minutes of crying. The third nap, he protested from the beginning. I don’t think I caught him at the beginning of his sleepiness and he did not want to go down. He cried for 45 minutes with me checking on him in intervals. I was one minute away from going upstairs to go get him….. and he fell asleep. That was the worst 45 minutes of my entire life. After he fell asleep, I just wanted to go up there and hold him! I could hear him still whimper in his sleep as he recovered from the hard crying. Ugh. Then he slept for two hours, woke up and was happy as could be, smiling at me and playing just like he had before. That night he was in bed by 6:30 and slept until 1:30, ate and went right back to sleep. Woke up again at 5 and ate and went right back to sleep.
Day 3 (Which is mistake #2), I had to work, so it was up to the babysitter. All the books talk about consistency, and how over the holidays or when you are busy with work is not a good time to do sleep training because you are less likely to be consistent. I didn’t want all the crying he had done to be for nothing, so I wrote a long instruction sheet and told her to call us if she had any problems or was feeling distressed at all. He took two 2 hour naps and didn’t protest when she put him down, and put himself back to sleep when he woke up after 30 minutes. Amazing! What a good boy! I was so proud of him! But, not wanting to invoke the wrath of karma, I didn’t want to celebrate too soon. He went to bed that night with my husband doing the routine by himself at 6pm and slept until FIVE AM! Yes, ladies and gentleman, Baby Ben slept through the night for the second time in his life! Woo hoo! He woke up to eat and slept again until 8am.
That brings us to today, Day 4. We played for an hour and then he ate and fussed a little in his crib (no crying) and went right to sleep. We are approaching the 2 hour nap mark as I type. I am hoping this is a pattern that continues! I don’t look forward to ever doing this again, but I think I’ve had it pretty easy compared to many other parents and I am glad (at this point) that I did it. Here are my lessons from sleep training:
*Probably a good idea to read some books so you can be a real expert on the method you choose. Or, really educate yourself on a couple of methods and then choose which one is right for your family. I don’t even think that you need to do one method, I think you could combine a couple of methods.
*What I liked about Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (although the lay out of the book is confusing), is that he tells you how to solve sleep problems no matter what methods you choose. I like his points about keeping an early and regular bedtime and really reading your child’s cues for sleepiness.
*Don’t do this when your child is in a difficult stage- teething, stranger anxiety etc. It will probably just be harder for you.
*Get your partner on board and make sure you are there to support each other through this. Also know that you are not going to ruin your training if you pick him up once or twice because you can’t take it anymore.
*You will be most successful if you do this when both of you are relatively free. Maybe take a day or two off from work so you won’t worry about being tired and your baby can have consistent caregivers.
*Most of all: Become Sleep Nazis. Do whatever you can to protect your child’s sleep. If that means you need to get a babysitter or not go to the holiday party, it’s worth it. Your child needs sleep just as much as you do. Healthy sleep means a happier baby, which probably leads to a happier momma. And if Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!
Good luck!
