sleeping through the night? say what?!

I have gotten a lot of questions about my experience with sleep training so I thought I’d just put our whole experience online so I can refer people here instead of trying to convey everything in a facebook comment:)

Marley was always a good sleeper. I remember quite a few times where I had to wake her up after 6-8 hours because I was worried she wasn’t eating often enough.

Although obviously we had a few long nights – but that’s to be expected with a newborn. I had prepared, no, definitely NOT prepared per say, more of… aware? I was aware of the fact that a baby would mess up my sleep schedule and I expected a few years (18?) enduring a constant lack of sleep. So with that expectation in mind – Marley was a phenomenal sleeperJ Generally 6-8 hour stretches.

Then month 5 hit. She started waking up every 2 -3 hours and would NOT go back to bed until she had eaten a FULL bottle. Her milk consumption nearly doubled and I was exclusively pumping so my supply was definitely not keeping up with her. Sidenote and perhaps the topic of another post: This was a whole new kind of stress that I had never experienced – not knowing if you can feed your child is terrifying!!!

Back to the story, I indulged her happily (kay, probly not ‘happily’ but certainly not angrily, maybe more of understandably?) as I thought she was just going through her 6 month growth spurt – she’s always had her growth spurts a bit early. However, nearly a month rolled by of this…

She would get FURIOUS with me if I tried to simply soothe her when she woke up rather than giving her a bottle. Working full-time and being a single parent when home (Ben is working full-time as well – just opposite shifts), was exhausting and I didn’t have the energy to fight her every 2-3 hours, plus she’s petite for her age so I never wanted to withhold food if she really was hungry. So I gave in – more and more bottles, my freezer stash was depleting. More stress, less sleep and a couple bouts of Mastitis and clogged ducts later, something had to be done. I started my research.

There are a couple of different ways you can teach your baby how to sleep through the night. But the learned skill is the same – putting themselves back to sleep without a ‘prop’. The prop can be a paci, being rocked, in our case – a bottle.

baby.center.com has a great article on the different techniques of sleep training. It was fair and called out the pros and cons of each. There are countless other methods but the 2 most common were Ferberizing, commonly referred to as the ‘cry-it-out’ method or a more gradual no-tears approach. Even though we had been doing everything else with Marley with a gradual focus, for some reason I just felt the Ferberizing approach was for us. Which is super weird because of some of the reasons I’ll mention later. I also loved the FAQs on this page. It talks about the CIO (cry-it-out) method and how it’s not as cruel as it sounds. I bought it and I was a staunch advocate against it.

Everything I was reading was saying that 6 month olds should be sleeping 10-12 hours at night and 2-4 hours of naps during the day. Disclaimer: They also recommend speaking with your doctor about doing any kind of sleep training to make sure baby is growing well enough to go that long without food.

I continued my research by reading tons of online forums to get other moms perspectives. As I was doing so, I realized a couple of things:

1) This may not work for Marley. A lot of moms reported that their babies just got more angry and hysterical when left to cry it out. This was definitely Marley. She had a hard time calming herself down. But I knew that I could try something else and I could rule this technique out a lot quicker than some of the slower-paced techniques.

2) I needed an affirmation. I typed up, printed out and posted this oober cheesy affirmation above Marley’s bed. The first night I had it posted on her door so that every time I walked in I would have to read and remain strong. After entering the room that first time, I realized I needed the affirmation right above her bed, not out on the door. It was easy for me plug in my headphones and clean while watching the clock and taking note of her cries in the background. Yes, it was easy to not enter her room as long as I had something else to do. It got HARD when I had to go in and soothe her by NOT picking her up and looking at her bright red eyebrows of fury. I moved the affirmation on my second check-in that night.

We are doing this for Marley as well as ourselves. The self-soothing and coping skills she will learn through this will help her (and us) live happier, healthier lives. She knows that we love her and will do anything for her. We will start by teaching her how to get a restful and peaceful nights’ sleep.

3) I needed to do it on a weekend. I knew I would probably be up most of the night since we didn’t have a baby monitor and my hearing ain’t so bueno. I planned to sleep right outside her door so I’d hear every whimper.

4) We’d probly do okay since her bedtime routine is pretty good – a couple of adjustments to eliminate falling asleep with the bottle but she generally went down initially really well. And in preparation for sleep training, I had already started separating that last bottle from falling asleep.

5) We decided that if she was still crying after 75 minutes, we’d give in. It’s recommended that you come up with a time for obvious reasons – your sanity, baby’s sanity. We’d check in/soothe/love on her at 6 minutes, then 8 minutes, then every 10 minutes after that.

6) We also designated me as the official sleep trainer. It’s recommended that one parent do the initial training so there is no confusion with body language or mixed signals. Once she had a week or so of success, Ben started going in to check on her during her occasional bouts of tears.

I had my plan. I was ready. It started (so I thought) on a Friday afternoon. Marley was ready for her nap but we didn’t have a good naptime transition or plan, nor had we ever. As I was getting ready to rock her to sleep on my chest – this was our pathetic routine for naps – still is as a matter of fact. I thought, ‘Hey, I read somewhere that I need to put her down while she’s sleepy but not asleep. Maybe I should try that now!’

Fail. She cried, hard, for 75 minutes. We hadn’t ever asked her to put herself to sleep in the middle of the day. There was no, ‘it’s naptime’ signal from me. Major FAIL. And a scary precursor for what lay ahead. When I called it at 75 minutes she was so high-strung that she didn’t fall asleep at all the rest of the day. I knew if I tried to put her down like that without a ‘reset sleep’ in would fail again. So I called it off and decided to wait until the next weekend.

However, Saturday was great. She napped so well and ate so well. Ben was home to be a support for me – I knew from Friday’s experience that I was going to be a wreck. It just felt right. She went down, no problem. And I curled up with a pillow and blanket outside her door. Around 2 she woke up. I checked on her 5-6 times over the course of 40 minutes. There were tears – only she never saw mine. But all of a sudden the crying stopped. 

SHE HAD PUT HERSELF BACK TO SLEEP!!!

Again around 5 for only 20-30 minutes this time. And again - SHE HAD PUT HERSELF BACK TO SLEEP!!!

One more night of this with only 1 wake-up and bam – we’ve got a baby who sleeps through the nightJ We even drove to Washington 5 days after her sleep training began and still – only 1 bad night of 5 nights there. Such a stinkin’ good baby!

Some of my favorite things about the fact that she regularly sleeps through the night are:

• I know when she really needs me. Or when she really doesn’t feel well (fortunately we haven’t run into this one yet). Or when she starts teething. I now will know that she’s crying for a reason other than that she needs help going back to sleep. LOVE LOVE LOVE this!!!
• I have some ME time. I can start going running in the mornings again. Before when I had no idea when she would wake up I felt like I needed to be there since Ben got home at 3 in the morning. He needed his sleep so I needed to be around if she woke up between 4-7; which is my prime running time. After 7, when I would go to work, he would have to wake up with her.
• Ben and I can do stuff together:) Fortunately our building is right next to the complex pool and hot tub. Since sleep training, we picked up a baby monitor. Now we can put her to bed (lock up) and sneak away for a swim and some couple time! The monitor reaches and we know she’s safe and sound in her little bedJ We haven’t tried this one yet – supposed to this weekend – but we want to try to go to the drive-in movie theater. We would just do her routine in the car and put her down in her car seat. Hopefully when we move her from car seat to bed at 2 in the morning, it’ll be smooth – ugh, wish us luck!

Obviously I can’t give my brilliant little baby ALL the credit;) So here are some things that we did early on that I think helped ease the transition for Marls.

Establishing a regular routine: I refer to this as though it’s this big ol’ production. But it’s really not. It’s only about 10 minutes long, if that. It’s basically just a couple of things that Ben and I do to send Marley signals that it’s bed time. But we each have our own twist, and it’s never at the EXACT same time so it’s not set in stone. I’m actually hoping to recruit one of my sisters to come to my house one night and put Marley to bed to see how she does with someone other than Mom or Dad leading it. It would be awesome if we could send her on a sleepover sometime and know that she was getting some good sleepJ Again, we never do this at the exact same time. We rely primarily on her cues. I look forward to being able to bump up her bed time to a more ‘normal’ time once Ben gets picked up and we don’t need her to sleep until 9 or 10amJ

At her first eye-rub after 9:15pm, I begin warming up her last bottle. This isn’t technically part of bed time so I feed her out in the living room or on Mom and Dad’s bed. I try to keep things quiet and set the tone for bed time. Now that she’s a successful sleeper, we can still play and be crazy while she’s eating and it doesn’t affect her sleep status.

Depending on how hungry she is, what day of the week it is and what time it is, she also gets a bath. IE, if it’s a Tuesday (or she didn’t get to the pool today and needs some splashing time) and it’s 9:30 and she’s not acting tired OR hungry then I’ll bathe her before food. But if she’s acting crazy hungry and it’s only 9:00, I’ll start with food and then use the bath to postpone bed time a bit so Daddy can get his sleep in the morning too. Again – I love that she’s so adaptable and flexible!!!

After she’s eaten her entire bottle (this is the one feeding I’m a stickler about since she’s not eating again for another 11 or so hours). We walk around to say goodnight to everyone. Giving them a hug, a peck on the cheek and a sweet ‘good night, sleep good, love you’ (when it’s just me and Scooter at home – this is a very short walk:).

Once everyone’s been kissed and hugged and wished a good night, we head to her room. While I put her in a fresh diaper and change her into her pajamas, we sing a couple songs – started with Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, most recently it’s been I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane. Just anything sung with a mellow tune. Lately she’s been joining in with a couple coos and shrieks – super adorable:)

Then we read a little book. It’s rare that she’ll stay on her back and listen to the whole book. I usually jump around or only read the ending or read the first few pages one night and others the next. She’ll start rolling onto her side or holding onto her toes, which means she’s ready to fall asleep.

I’m a very snuggly person with my family so I give her a few minutes of a face nuzzle where I tell her how perfect she is, how much I love her and other sweet nothingsJ She grabs my face and gives me big grins – nearly bringing me to tears each time. Then I turn on her music box that plays Toyland, give her one more goodnight kiss and make the dog crawl out from under Marley’s bed, turn off the lights and close the door.

In 10 minutes – she’s down for the night:)

I plan to incorporate brushing teeth and hair in this soon – but she needs some teeth and hair first.

The other family practice that I know helped her during this sleep training is that I do make sure to respond to her cries and whimpers when I know it’s for a reason. Throughout the day I don’t let her cry for very long at all when she’s hungry or sleepy or anything. She knows I’ll respond – sometimes too quickly. But this will wear off over time. As she gets more confidence through experiencing success – sleeping alone, holding her own bottle, self-feeding, attending day care a few times a week and being tended by family – she’ll become more independent. Though, I won’t lie, I’m not rushing this. I know it’ll come and it’ll come faster than I’m ready for it. So for now, I’m going to take her back when she’s upset because I CAN make it better. I’m going to jump when she snaps because right now what she wants is what I WANT her to want, me:)