To sleep train or not to sleep train, that is the question.  Baby T has many attributes.  He smiles and laughs often.  He loves to crawl and is infinitely curious.  He eats anything and everything in sight.  But Baby T is not, nor has he ever been, a good sleeper.

Not being a good sleeper seems like no big deal — at first.  After ten months of not sleeping well, Baby T’s inability to sleep has become a big deal.  I’m a zombie.  I’ve become a klutz, a grump, absent-minded and dim-witted.  On top of all that, I’ve nearly emptied my meager checking account between buying lattes from the Starbucks located directly below my office, and purchasing make-up promising to make me look years younger, and more importantly, somewhat awake.

Still, I wasn’t willing to let Baby T cry it out.  There were a few reasons.  One was we’re living in a house with another mom and two kids who need to sleep.  My first instinct is to hush him so others don’t wake up too.  Another reason is I feel guilty enough that I haven’t managed to keep Baby T’s dad around.  Hearing him cry makes me feel that much more like an unfit mom.  Listening to a crying baby and not doing anything about it just seems cruel.  In the words of William Shakespeare in Macbeth:

“Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”

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And without dear, sweet sleep we are reduced to just muddling through the day, in a survival mode.  It’s occurred to me that my lack of sleep may in fact mean I’m missing being fully present and really enjoying Baby T’s first year.  Other times I arrive at a destination and get out of my truck when I realize I don’t remember actually driving there.

I’d been struggling with whether to sleep train or not for a long time.  As soon as I mustered up the energy and courage to try sleep training, something would happen.  Baby T would get sick and then I would get sick and then we would go on vacation.  There always seemed to be a reason to delay sleep training, not least of all that I wasn’t particularly eager to spend a night listening to my sweet baby cry.

But the time has finally come where I feel that I just have to get both Baby T and myself sleeping through the night.  It started yesterday when I was running with a friend after work.  There was a chain link fence in front of us.  I completely miscalculated how high I had to jump and my toe caught the chain, which I fell onto and badly cut and bruised the entire shin on my right leg.  It wasn’t that I didn’t see the chain; I did.  It was just that I saw double of the chain – everything is a bit blurred these days, especially when I run.  As I hobbled back to my friend’s house, my friend, who by occupation is a therapist, asked me how I was feeling.  I told her it hurt and I was feeling like I just wanted to get a decent night of sleep.  She paraphrased and said, so you’re saying you’re tired.  Yep, she nailed it – I was exhausted.  She asked what I could do about it.  Sleep training seemed like the only reasonable answer.

Then today Baby T had a wellness check-up at his pediatrician’s office.  I asked him about whether Baby T should be sleeping through the night.  He hesitated at this.  He told me that physically Baby T no longer needed the calories from eating during the night.  He then asked me where Baby T was sleeping.  When I replied that Baby T sleeps in his crib in his nursery, he thought sleeping through the night would be a good goal to work toward.  Our pediatrician cautioned that getting a baby to sleep through the night is easier said than done.  His advice – be strong and prepare for sleep training as you would prepare for any big endurance undertaking like running a marathon or taking the bar exam.  Buy ear plugs.  Download inspirational music.  Enlist friends on stand by to call at all hours of the night.  But whatever you do, my pediatrician warned, once you venture down the path you must continue.  He told me that any time I falter, I will start at ground zero again.

It’s with great trepidation that I’ve officially decided to start sleep training. . . tomorrow that is.  But first one more night of the usual middle of the night bottle feedings and rocking my baby back to sleep.

Has anyone else made the decision to sleep training?  Did it work, and if so, how long did it take?  Any advice for a first-timer mom?