You Won't Believe It...

I'm about to bring up a controversial subject...sleep training.  That's right, I said it!  Just like everything having to do with babies, everyone has their own opinion on sleep training and anything other than their belief is wrong and bad for children.  With that being said, as we are working on developing good sleep habits for Stella, we found a sleep training method that seems to be working well for us.  I'm sure some people will disagree with my methods but, frankly, I don't really care.

As I mentioned in my last post, we have been making a strong effort to get Stella to sleep on her back.  After almost a week of little progress, I decided we needed to take another approach.  I read a book called, "Sleep: Top Tips from the Baby Whisperer."  I chose this book because it offered a middle of the road solution between wearing your baby 24x7 and the Cry It Out method.  The author suggests a pick up, put down method that allows the baby to cry and learn to self-soothe but the adult never leaves the room while they are awake, which eliminates any abandonment issues that are said to occur with the cry it out method.

Essentially, Hogg (the Author/Baby Whisperer - hee hee) says that when you see signs of sleepiness, you go ahead and put your baby in their crib, lay your hand on their tummy and tell them it is nap time (or bed time) and you'll see them when they wake up.  If the baby begins crying, she says to pick them up and hold them for 3-5 minutes or until they stop crying and then put them down.  Repeat this process until the baby is asleep.  Hogg noted that the first few days usually take 20min-1 hour of this before the baby gives in and goes to sleep but as time goes on, the process will become shorter and shorter until you can eventually lay your baby down and say, "see ya when you wake up" and the baby will put themselves to sleep.

We thought we'd give it a try.  On our first try, we found that the pick up, put down method may not be the best method for Stella (or our backs) but that the thought process behind the method might work so we tweaked it.  We did the PU/PD method for about 10 minutes but then left her in her crib, put our hand on her belly, reassured her things were ok with our voices and allowed her to cry and whimper until she fell asleep.  The entire process took about 20 minutes at first.  Unfortunately, she woke up within 20 minutes and it took 50 minutes of the same thing to get her back to sleep, where she slept another 30 minutes.  So the first nap was 2 hours long, 70 minutes of soothing and 50 minutes of napping.  Not a bad start.

The second nap went pretty much the same.  20 minutes of initial soothing, but a lot less frantic crying more mantra crying (repetitive tired cry), as Hogg would describe.  Followed by 20 minutes of sleep...followed by 20 more minutes of soothing...followed by another 30 minute nap.  The second nap was 90 minutes.  40 of fussing and 50 of sleeping.  Already seeing progress.

I wasn't home in the evening but Matt said it only took him 20 minutes of fussing the first time and then only 5 minutes the second time.  YAY! Progress! 

But here came the real test...night time sleeping!  This is the part I was dreading because it had been so awful for the past week.  We have a bed in the nursery right now so I decided that rather than disrupt the pattern of sleeping in her crib, we would just go ahead and take the plunge and transition her out of our room and into her crib for all naps and night time sleeping.  So I nursed her and then put her in her crib and I slept in the bed in her nursery.  I had expected to get woken up within an hour (as she had done in nights before) but when I woke up around 1:30am, she was still sleeping.  I went and checked on her to make sure she was still breathing because I literally couldn't believe it.  She was, so I went back to bed.  I woke up again around 2:30am, still sleeping.  Finally, I was awakened by Stella at around 4:30.  She had gone 6 1/2 hours straight sleeping in her crib on her back!!!

She has a nasty habit of waking up about 4:30 wanting to be fed so I put my hand on her tummy and within 2 minutes she was back asleep again.  This time until 5:45.  I finally got her out, changed her and fed her but then put her back in her crib where she slept again until 8:45!!!!!!  WHO IS THIS BABY!?!?!?  Oh and get this, she was awake when I put her in her crib after feeding her and within 5 minutes of talking to herself (not crying) she put herself to sleep!!! MIRACLE!!!!

So...say what you want about sleep training but my baby slept through the night for the first time in over a month and with little to no crying!  Don't get me wrong, it isn't easy to sit there with my hand on her chest assuring her that everything will be ok while she cried but I've come to realize that she really cried as much in my arms when she was winding down to sleep but I just felt better about my actions when I was rocking her, etc.  Most of the issues I have with her sleep patterns have been created by me and now it is my job to work on not getting in the way of her progress.  Thankfully, I have an amazing support system with our nanny and Matt, who are both extremely patient and flexible.

Now this all happened yesterday and we are trying day 2 of this sleep training today.  So far the fussy periods before sleep have been cut almost in half but she is still only sleeping in about 20-30 minute increments.  Hopefully we can extend those over time and lessen the fussy times.  I realize that it may get worse before it gets better but I feel more solid knowing we have a plan and are already seeing results.

Keep praying for us as we continue this training.  Hopefully soon, Stella will be a pro napper and night time sleeper like she used to be. Yay sleep!!