Sleep Training - Day 1

Warning: Some of you may not agree with this - and at the beginning of Henry's life, I was not an advocate either. However, things have changed and hence inspired new thoughts and change in my parenting beliefs. Read on if interested - but keep your backlash thoughts to yourself.

What?!?

In our home, we have decided that it is necessary to start some sort of sleep training. Up until now, we have rocked Henry to sleep. This went well for some period of time. I absolutely love rocking him, and holding his sleepy self in my arms. However, he often wakes up as soon as you put him in the crib, and then you must start all over. After one evening of 4 hours of this back and forth - Nick gave in and let Henry sleep in his bouncy seat. We thought he was stirring around 1am, so I got up and rested on the couch, waiting for him to wake up. The next thing I knew - it was 6am.

This wonderful event let me know that a.) He is completely incapable of falling (and staying) asleep on his own and b.) He is now capable of going at least 8 hours in the night without eating.

So - how do we teach him to self soothe and fall asleep without us? There are many different books and opinions on the Sleep Training subject, and we have chosen to go with the Babywise method. I'd say the majority of my friends who are parents have raised Babywise babies, and have nothing but good things to say about it.

I'd already been following a loose based daily schedule that follows Babywise, simply because that's what seemed to naturally set in place for us. Henry's on a 2.5/3 hour schedule -- he eats, he has waketime that consists of playing independently, playing with us, or just hanging out. Then he naps. His naps right now range anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the day, etc. This I hope to even out with the Sleep Training process.

Nick and I sat down and discussed what our nap time and bedtime routines are going to be - which loosely is based on the 4 S's from the book, Baby Whisperer.

Naptime: Diaper Check, Wrap in Blanket, Sing Lullaby, Sit, Put down in crib
Bedtime: Bath (if bath night), PJ's, Diaper Check, Nurse, Prayer, Lullaby, Sit, Put down in Crib

And then comes the worst part ... Crying It Out (CIO). Babywise says to do this from Day 1. However, I personally do not think it's developmentally appropriate that young - their memories aren't developed and they could literally be feeling abandoned. (I do not know if that's accurate or not - I'm not a scientist, that's just my personal opinion).

However - in the past weeks Henry has begun showing us that he is developing an opinion. He went from taking the bottle easily to having issues. He decided for a period of time he would only take a bottle from me. This shows me that he's developing preferences and opinions, and we need to help him make the right opinion about sleep time! I do believe that we were doing him a huge disservice by not showing him how to fall asleep and self soothe on his own.

So - last night - Night 1 - went like this:

7:45pm - Bathtime
8:00 - PJ's, Diaper Change, Nurse

Unfortunately (or luckily? I don't know) Henry fell sound asleep while nursing. There was no waking him. So we prayed over him, and skipped the song/sitting and he went right down. But I knew it wouldn't last.

He woke up around 8:45 and started talking.
8:52 - crying began.

We have discovered that Henry is a roller coaster crier. He whimpers/talks to himself most of the time, with a shrill yelp here and there. Then, he goes through bouts of wailing. Then he calms down again - you think he might be out - and the whimpering starts again.

9:20 - I went in and put his pacifier in, put his blankets back on, and went back out.

Crying coaster continued.

9:55 - I went in, changed his diaper, reswaddled him, held and lullabyed him, and laid him back down.

10:00 Back aboard the crying coaster after about 5 minutes of hopeful silence.

10:10 - Asleep!!

And then he slept all the way until 8am!

I do have to set his waketime, which I think I'm going to do at 7am. But I was just so happy to sleep, I didn't do that today.

Check back later to see how the CIO goes for naptimes today - and hopefully we'll have less than an hour of CIO tonight. I just have to tell myself that we're teaching him something new, it will take time, and we're hoping to avoid this in the mornings because we're both still too tired: