Sleep Training

Wow!


Having a baby and moving to a new city sure does suck up a lot of your time! I was reading some other lady's blog about sleep training after reading The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems book to try to get my baby to sleep through the night. She is 10 1/2 months old and still wakes up several times a night wanting to breastfeed. She also tends to stay up until 11 or 12 at night. (At the Aunties' house she stayed up until 1:30! Noooooo!) I have had less full nights of sleep than I can count on one hand while using one of those fingers to flip the bird to everyone who is well-rested. (just kidding!) But seriously. The lack of sleep was getting old and making it difficult to get through every day. And also making me quite grumpy.


I have been doing a lot of internet research on the subject and considered the Cry-It-Out method (Ferber) but couldn't do it. I felt mean. So I got this book after reading a bit about it on the internets.

Here are some quick things about the book:

1. The lady who wrote the book is some British super-nanny (think the TV show) who has dealt with hundreds of babies.

2. She knows a lot of things about babies.

3. She is kinda mean to you. She made me feel super guilty a bunch of times and like an IDIOT. And I kept reading because she uses words like "luv" when she is insulting you. Maybe it's a British thing? "Wow, luv, you sure messed up your baby!"


So anyways. I read a bunch of it textbook style (skimming pages/skipping to relevant chapters/rereading important passages) and decided to give it a try. I was all ready to try it on a Friday (the recommended day because it's the weekend and you don't have to worry so much about loss of sleep) but baby got a super fever and so she ended up sleeping with me in bed most of the weekend. (Which is very, very bad according to super nanny.) So after finding a doctor in our new city small town, and getting her some antibiotics, we were ready to try it last night (Wednesday). By the way, super nanny says it could take about 3 days to re-train them but UP TO THREE WEEKS. I sure hope 3 weeks is not my future. Daddy is sleeping in another room during work days for now.

Here are the basics of this sleep training method (if you are interested in trying this, I would suggest getting the book from the library because it gives a much better explanation than I do here):

1. Make sure your kid is on a good routine during the day. This includes eating BEFORE activity time and not right before going to sleep. Basically repeat E.A.S.Y. throughout the day. Eat, Activity, Sleep, and You time. I spent about two weeks readjusting her daytime routine little by little (mostly just moving Eat to right after she woke up instead of right before she went to sleep).

2. Follow a sleeptime ritual every night. We have been doing this, I just had to subtract the eating part from the ritual. Baby Emerald is a "spirited" baby and loves being awake and playing so we have to do about 30 minutes of calm play (reading, singing, cuddling, talking) before bed. Then we do diaper change, pajamas, song and lay her in the crib.

"I'm awaaaaaaaaake!!!!!"

3. When baby cries at night, do the Pick Up/Put Down method (P.U./P.D.).Ages 4mos and Up. For littler babies that aren't pulling themselves up you pick up the baby and hold him until he is calm and put him down the second he stops crying. You can also shushhhhhhh them while you are doing this (Happiest Baby on the Block also likes this method). And pat them on the back while you are doing this. This helps calm them.
All of this is irrelevant to me because now she is at the age where those things are distracting and not helpful. So for older babies that can pull themselves up to standing in the crib, you basically just lay them back down. Over and over and over. You don't have to pick them all the way up to a holding position. Do this about 100 times until the baby stops standing up. Wait until she is all the way standing to do it every time.

4. Stay with your baby the whole time  You are letting the baby know that you are here to help her through this difficult time. Unlike the Cry-It-Out method you are maintaining trust with your baby because she doesn't feel abandoned. Sit/Stand by the crib until she is asleep. This was the hard part for me about the Ferber method. I couldn't bring myself to just listen to her "suffer". This way, I have an active role in helping my baby learn to sleep properly.

"Don't leave me, mommy!"

5. Talk to your baby in a calm, confident, reassuring voice. The idea is that eventually you will be able to calm the baby with just the voice and no physical intervention.
If I'm frustrated, I don't say anything until I'm calm. Then I will tell her it is "sleepy time" and she needs to go to sleep. And a bunch of other random mumbo jumbo that I think of at 4 a.m. 

6. Be Consistent and Patient. Don't just do this for a day or even for just a week. Do it as long as it takes. (that's what she said). Also, babies regress throughout their childhood for a variety of reasons. Be prepared to pull the above methods out as needed. She might wake up due to teething. Or a growth spurt. Or bad nightmares. Don't assume it didn't work just because she is waking up again. This method will work and she will go to sleep MUCH faster than if you decided to try a different method. I'm a pretty patient person, but I need to work on consistency. It's easy to give up if something isn't working right away...


Here's how it went:


Wednesday Night, November 7. (Yay, Obama is president still!)

THIS is what I like to see.

8:50 p.m. Baby is showing signs of sleepiness (yawning, rubbing eyes..). I get her fed for the last time, changed, and into her pajamas by 9:00. I hold her on my lap but she is maaaaad and does not want to go to sleep without the boob. I listened to this crying for 40 minutes. Except it got much worse as time went on. When a baby cries it's annoying. But when it's your baby it's simultaneously annoying and heart wrenching. I got so frustrated that she wouldn't sleep and wouldn't stop crying that I set her aside for a second and punched the bed.  WHY WONT YOU JUST SLEEEEEEEEEP!! (this book was going thru my head...) Eventually she fell asleep at about 9:50.

11:30 p.m. Baby wakes up in a fit of rage. It takes an HOUR to get her to calm down and fall back asleep. I am picking her up and putting her back down constantly. She is soooooooo mad. ("Why can't we just do it like we always did it, mom?") She would stand in the crib, I would pick her up and lay her down and rinse and repeat about a million times.

12:50 a.m. When she finally does fall asleep, I am soooo revved up I can't sleep. I go to my computer and vent to my best friend on chat. And I have a glass of red wine. The wine ended up not being very good so I chased it with some sharp cheddar.When I was having my wine, she started crying again but I gave myself a 5 minute break and during that time she stopped crying. I then take a nice hot bath (which I haven't done since I moved). Then I spend some time reading some more of the book to mentally re-prepare for the night.

It's about 2 a.m. when I finally lay down to sleep.

4:00 a.m. Baby is crying again. I go over to her crib and only have to to P.U./P.D. a few times. But she is still whimpering. I keep my hand on her and "talk her down". In a soothing, calm voice, I am telling her all about the progress we made for gay rights and women's rights this year and then I talk about giving birth and all the work we both did for that, and how if we could make it through that we can make it through the night. I complimented her on being strong. I think it really did help. Maybe she sensed my frustration earlier and that's why she took so long to calm down? Or maybe after 3 times, she was getting to know that I was serious about this. It only took about 25 minutes this time to calm her down.

6:45 a.m. She is awake again. Crying, but not bloody murder. It's been 9 hours without feeding and I felt like she went long enough...plus my breasts were really full. I fed her and of course she went right back to sleep.

Awwww, they are so cute when they're asleep!

9:00 a.m. She is awake. Since she did not get much sleep last night, I spend 40 minutes trying to get her to go back to sleep. Which she does. In retrospect  I probably should have just gotten up with her and then took a nap in an hour or so but I was sooooooooooo tired and not thinking quite straight. She slept till noon. I woke up at about 11.

The rest of the day was great. We were both in great moods and she was the best behaved she has been all week (I think the ear infection is almost gone!).

2:45 p.m.- She started showing sleepy signs again. I took her to the room, sang her a little song and laid her down in her bed. She didn't get up or scream or anything. She fell asleep and slept for almost 4 hours!!! Usually she only sleeps for 1.5-2 hours during her one nap of the day. I'm sure she was just tired from the long night and probably still recovering slightly from her ear infection...  Anyways, her nap gave me LOTS of free time.





Thursday Night, November 8

9:00 p.m.-She is showing sleepy signs. I spilled her medicine all over the floor when trying to shake it and the lid the came off. Had to give her a bath. After the bath, lotion, diaper, pajamas, 2 books and a song, we were in the dark room ready to sleep. She cried a little while I put the pajamas on but as soon as I laid her in the crib she did not pull up or fuss or anything and just laid there quietly for about 7 minutes until her eyes finally closed. Not a single cry. It is now 10:00. I should have started the go-to-bed-process earlier. My new goal is to get her in her crib by 9:00.

don't read at night or you may never sleep!

1:00 a.m. I am finally going to bed. (dumb, right?) All the books tell you to sleep when your baby sleeps especially during crazy stuff like this, but I just couldn't sleep. Also, the book I'm reading was getting quite good. I read it for about half an hour more with my nightlight under the covers. Secret reaaaaading.

badass nightlight!

 (By the way, I loooove my Mobi Glowmate nightlight. It is just enough light to see by/read in secret by/get dressed early in the morning before work by without waking up the baby. Also, it never gets hot so you could let your kid sleep with it. And there is a rainbow of colors to choose from on the settings. AND!!! There is a 15 minute-turn-off option where it will turn off automatically after that amount of time. Get it!)

"Winning" -Charlie Sheen

4:00 a.m. I hear baby crying. She made it more than 5 hours without waking up!!! Holy cow! According to my research, I'm one lucky mama... Now here's the awesome part. I roll out of bed and stumble like a zombie over to the crib bracing myself for 30+ minutes of trying to coax her to sleep. I do the P.U./P.D. thing 2 or 3 times and she is done standing up. I think my little one is learning quickly! I know she is still awake so I'm talking to her in my calm voice. After about 5 minutes she hasn't made a sound or moved so I go back to bed.



6:50 a.m. She wakes up again. Not full-on the world is ending crying just letting-you-know-i'm-awake crying. I feed her. This works out perfectly because she has gone about 9 hours without eating so I know she is actually hungry and on the days I work this is when I would naturally feed her anyways. Daddy is in the room so he gets to say hello. (Cute story...after he left the room, she heard him in the hallway and stopped eating to say "Dah!" He came over and gave her one more kiss.) She stops eating after about 15 minutes or so (she used to eat for only 5 minutes during the night and then fall asleep....that's how I knew she wasn't really hungry) and is NOT asleep but is laying in my arms nice and relaxed. I can't believe she didn't nurse to all the way to sleep!!!! So I lay her in her crib and she quietly lays there and gently drifts off to sleep as I say "good night" to her. <3

10:00 a.m. She wakes up chipper and ready to start the day!


6:00 p.m. Naptime. She didn't want to go to sleep (because she was overtired). So it took about 5-10 minutes to put her down. When I left the room and thought she was almost asleep she started crying. I was in the bathroom at the time and by the time I was done the crying stopped so I didn't go back in.

Today was a bit crazy because I had a bunch of errands to run in "town". Where Safeway and Walmart and Banks are. So baby did a few naps in the car and then we got home later than when her naptime would start so her nap was like 2 hours late. I actually went in and woke her up from her nap so it wouldn't start to run into bedtime. Then after feeding her and playing with her and washing her off it was already super late! So she went to bed 2 hours late. Bad, bad, bad! I can hear Super Nanny berating me in my head.

Friday Night, November 9

10:45 p.m. Start wind-down routine. She is pretty excited from visiting her aunties today and also seeing some friends come over. She is bouncing up and down on the bed talking to her kitty and yawning every few minutes but acting like she is not tired whatsoever. I'm not fooled! I hold her on my lap and sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". She is struggling a little but quickly losing the battle. At this point the yawns are like 1 second apart. So I sing it again.  Then I put her in the crib. She stands up. I do P.U./P.D. for about 5 minutes. Sometimes she stays down for a minute then gets back up. Instead of crying, this time, she was talking and talking. She didn't want to sleep, she explained to me. She cried only for a second after I put her back down each time. It took about 10 minutes total from when I laid her in the crib to when she stayed still and eyes started closing and I left the room. Considering how off-schedule we were today and all the excitement we had, she fell asleep pretty easily.

3:30 a.m. She woke up. It took only about 5 minutes to get her back to sleep with a few P.U./P.D.s and soothing talking.

<I think she woke up sometime in between 3:30-7:30 for a couple minutes and I went to her crib, but I cant really remember in the haze of sleepiness...>

We burned this chair and some political things.

7:30 a.m. She slept in a little bit longer for the weekend! Fed her and she went back to sleep.

10:30 a.m. She woke up and is ready to start the day!

Another strange day today. We went to visit Grandma for her birthday and were still there during the start of her naptime. We didn't bring a portable crib because we were thinking we would leave before her naptime but we didn't realize we had to burn a bunch of stuff and eat some gay cupcakes to celebrate Ref. 74 gay marriage act.
She slept in the car on the way there (1-1:40) and on the way back (5-5:50).

Mmmmm! Gay Cupcakes!

6:30 p.m. We got home and unloaded the car and I put her to bed for a late nap. I woke her up at a 7:40 because I didn't want her too be up too late.



Saturday Night, November 10

10:00 p.m. I put her to bed later than I wanted. Tomorrow night will be better I promise! It ended up taking a few P.U./P.D.'s and crying. She wanted to hang out with everyone and did NOT want to sleep. After about 15 minutes or so (plus 15 minutes of wind-down time...reading books and singing songs in her room away from everyone) she was finally sleepy.

Tonight was Daddy's first time trying the P.U./P.D. method. It was also the first night I had a baby monitor hooked up (finally bought one Friday!) She did cry once for less than a minute and then went back to sleep at about midnight.

3:00 a.m. Daddy helps baby fall asleep. Not sure if it was because it was not me or what, but she was screaming bloody murder. She was very very mad! After 10 minutes of anger crying, I got her a bottle (I had drank some wine and wasn't ready to nurse yet). She chowed down and emptied most of it, so I think she was just hungry. I think she didn't eat too much that day because she was too busy visiting everyone and looking at all the cool things. Like burning chairs.

7:00 a.m. Since we gave her a nighttime feeding, we didn't give her a feeding right now. Daddy did P.U./P.D. again and it went MUCH better this time. She went to sleep very quickly and no crying! This gives me hope because this was only his second time doing it so maybe it will work for nighttime babysitters especially if she is on a good schedule! :)

9:00 a.m. She wakes up. I'm pretty sure she is hungry so I nurse her. She eats a bunch and falls right back to sleep. I move her to the crib and she continues sleeping.

11:00 a.m. She is awake!!!!!! She has a lot of fun playing with Mommy AND Daddy in the morning. (We love weekends!)

If I could go back in time, I would totally have gotten my baby on a routine much earlier. This is my first baby and before her, I didn't know "'nothin' 'bout....no babies" (paraphrasing..). So I just went with the flow. I bet I COULD have been sleeping through the night much sooner if I had known these things. But, I was in survival mode. I hope that this helps someone avoid the troubles I experienced.





Update: I got super busy with life stuff and forgot to finish this! It did take a few more days of that "fun" sleep training. Maybe a week or two, I can't remember. But eventually it worked and by a year old she was FINALLY sleeping through the night. Consistently. Here schedule right now is:

7:40 Get ready for Bed (Routine)
8:00 Go to bed. 99% of the time it is fuss free and she lays down happily. I usually don't hear a peep from her unless she:

• Has a bad dream
• Gets stuck in her crib (this happens very rarely nowadays, but she used to get her knee stuck in between the slats)
• Is sick/teething

She usually sleeps through the night on normal nights until 7 or 8 am.

Every child is different, and hopefully the next one will sleep more easily. . . (knock on wood!)