My experiences with sleep training

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert! These are just my experiences with my child so remember, every child is different.

I had seriously had enough. My son rarely slept more than 2 hours (it had happened like 4 times) and it was in our bed. Now I'm all for cosleeping but as he got older and bigger I realized it was time to get our bed back. Oh, and did I mention the constant nursing? He was basically sleeping with my boob in his mouth (not to be off color as my grandmother would say but I just don't know how else to say it!). Needless to say I wasn't getting much sleep. He was 7 months old and it was time!

The thing that really helped me understand the purpose of the cry it out method (as it's often called) is that it really is just about training your baby to sleep. Being able to soothe themselves and fall asleep on their own is a learned skill just like feeding themselves, crawling and everything else our babies learn to do. If babies are always rocked or nursed to sleep then they'll never learn this important skill. Deciding to let him cry it out was a decision that we didn't come to lightly but we knew it was in our best interest AND his. Let me tell you, we are unbelievably glad we did it!

Our routine before sleep training was as follows: he'd eat solids at 6-7 when we had dinner, play time, bath time sometime after then I'd nurse him to sleep sometime between 9-10 (he was going to bed later and later, sometimes staying awake until 11:00 or 12:00). There were times when nursing didn't work so my husband would walk him around for 30 minutes or so until he passed out. He'd sleep in his crib for 2 hours then wake up crying. I'd be so tired I would just bring him to our bed and nurse him. We slept/nursed all night  (switching sides every hour or so) until 8ish. I'd always tell myself I wasn't going to bring him to bed when he woke up but I always did because even if I nursed him and put him back in his crib he'd wake up an hour later. It was awful...

After doing some research on different methods, this is the plan we came up:

1. An earlier bedtime was imperative and so was a routine. Dinner at 6-7, bath time right after then nurse/bottle to calm him down and get him sleepy. 

2. Lay him down awake. We had never really done that before but it was important that he learn to put himself to sleep.

3. No matter what, we would not get him out of the crib. Period. We were prepared for a long night!

So the first night we followed our plan. We laid him down and went back in and patted him and soothed him after 3 minutes, then again in 5 then 7 then 10. We then went in every 10 minutes to soothe him until we realized it seemed to make it worse. He would get louder and cry harder after we left and about the time he'd start calming down we'd go in and upset him again. After about an hour we decided to stop going in...after another 30 minutes he fell asleep. Let me tell you, it was not easy to listen to but we could tell the difference between really crying and more like hollering for us to come get him. He woke up several times that night which we expected and he cried until he fell asleep again. Each time it took about 45 minutes which, again, was awful. The next night was about the same but it took a little less time for him to fall asleep. 

One of my main concerns was that he was used to eating practically all night so I didn't feel comfortable with stopping night feedings altogether. The first night I didn't know what to do and I wound up not feeding him...I was scared the crying he went through to go to sleep would be all for noting if I got him out and fed him. Now at 7 months old babies are totally fine with skipping bottles at night. Apparently some babies actually sleep through the night all on their own! So I knew it wouldn't HURT him to go without but I decided to compromise by giving a morning bottle. We're about 6 weeks in and this is what we've got going on: 

- we stick pretty close to our original routine: dinner (solids) between 6-7, about 10-20 minutes of play time, bath, then a 4-6 oz bottle (he's not really hungry, it's more of a soother) and in bed awake but sleepy by 8:00

- he whines for at most 5 minutes then falls asleep. He usually wakes up 1-3 times a night and whines for a few minutes and falls back asleep on his own.

- he wakes up between 5-7 and I get in there as quickly as I can and give him a bottle. He's still really sleepy and he goes back to sleep for another hour and 2.

He even fell asleep sitting up the other day...cutest thing I've ever seen!

I kind of still feel like we have this carnival act of The Amazing Sleeping Baby because I can remember a few months ago feeling absolutely helpless when it came to his lack of sleep. I didn't know what to do or how to fix it so I had just decided that moms don't really need sleep and this was going to be my life. I'm so relieved to be able to get in my bed without a baby attached to me I don't know what to do! I hope this post can help someone going through the same thing we did and give you the confidence and information you need to make sleep training a success! It worked for us and now we have an amazing sleeper who is an all around happier baby which makes for a happy family.

- Elizabeth -