Sam is sleeping!

So I thought I would post about our latest development in sleeping. For a little background, Davis is two tomorrow. When he was born we decided to practice attachment parenting and co-sleeping etc. That worked great until he was about five months and then I realized that I needed more structure and more space or I might kill myself or others. (Okay maybe not that drastic, but close.) I still wanted to breastfeed on demand and hold and cuddle and all that, but I did not want to sleep with him anymore. We were up every hour and I was tired. But I was afraid to let him cry and so this went on till he was seven months. We tried the no cry sleep solution and it was a joke. Didn’t work for us at all. At seven months I read, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy child and decided to use “extinction” with Davis. I actually couldn’t do it, so I left the house each night and let Michael watch the monitor as Davis cried for over an hour until he fell asleep. It took three days and then he slept through the night. From then on he was a great sleeper. I just laid him in his bed awake and said good night and he would sleep. Still those three days were awful. So-

With Sam I decided while pregnant that he would never sleep with me at all. I spent a ridiculous amount of money on several in the bed co-sleeping devices etc. When I got home from the hospital, it was too hard and I was too tired and I chucked them out of the bed and co-slept. Best laid plans and all of that. Well here in Tempe we only have a queen sized bed and Sam and Michael and I were crowding each other and my back hurt and I decided I wanted Sam to learn to enjoy sleeping alone in his pack-n-play. But we waited till four months because that’s what all the books and my pediatrician advised.

Sam turned four months a week ago and so we began sleep training. I didn’t want to use extinction, because I just thought he was still too little. We decided to use the Ferber method because it is supposedly more gentle because you check and console. I’m an organized chart/time keeping person, so I thought I could handle it. I also have a husband who is completely supportive of this method. That helped. So we starting putting Sam down around six thirty each evening in his crib drowsy, full, but awake. And then we would follow the method.

Let me tell you, it was HARD. Hard and awful. Night after night he would wake up hourly and cry for half an hour to two hours with us checking in and loving on him periodically. I was not prepared for this to take so long. I remembered how quickly the extinction method worked on Davis, but when I went back and read the sleep books, they all said that because you checked on the baby periodically, it would take longer. To make this process harder, we also realized that we had to take Sam’s pacifier away. So we chucked that out the window too. So now my sweet angel, who was used to his plastic plug and his mama’s breast had to learn to do without. He also learned how to flip over both ways this week. So now all he wants to do is flip onto his stomach. The good news is that he LOVES to sleep on his tummy. And so now I can allow him to since he flips himself that way.

It took seven days. Then last night I put him down and he didn’t cry. I woke him at eleven and three to nurse, and when we were done I would lay him in his crib awake and he wouldn’t cry. He just smiled at me, flipped onto his tummy and fell asleep. He slept soundly till 6:30AM. This is a miracle. It was such a hard week, since I was up every time to do the check and console since Michael had to sleep because he was studying so hard for his test.

But now I’ve given him a skill that will serve him his whole life long. He’s learned how to go to sleep by himself. I have had a good night’s sleep so I can chase Davis around and play with him. And Sam is so much happier now without the pacifier. He has learned to suck on his fingers and so he always has something near. He used to cry every time he dropped the dang paci, and now he can self soothe.

This isn’t to say that I don’t feel guilt. I do. I was so torn everytime he cried. But I knew the worse thing to do was quit, because that would mean I made him cry all those nights for nothing. And I’m not trying in anyway to tell anyone else what to do. This was right for me and my baby, but it might not be for yours.

So celebrate with me if you can. It worked! I got my first good night’s sleep in over four months! And so did my baby! Yippee!!!!!

Love, Amber