Hellobee

Okay, so Wonder Baby was 11 months old when we started sleep training.  You can read about our decision to sleep train here and about how we chose the Sleep Sense program here.  The program was 14 days and I chose to do night time and naps, and to completely night wean. I started with the “stay in the room” method but starting leaving her alone at night 5 because that’s when Mr SH switched to night shifts and I had to take care of both girls again.  Oh, and Wonder Baby sleeps in a crib, in our room, often ending up in our bed.  I wanted her to sleep only in her crib from now on.

Overall we were very successful, although naps are still a work in progress.  One of my favourite things about Sleep Sense was that I had a video to watch every morning.  It often dealt with the issues I was facing and was nicer than rereading the book all the time, even though the information was pretty similar.  I called them my morning talks with Dana (Dana Olbeman is the founder of Sleep Sense and does the videos) and would talk about her as though we were having actual conversations.  Yes, I’m slightly insane, but whatever works, right?

If you don’t want to read the whole journal, that’s fine by me!  The short version is that Wonder Baby went from not sleeping more than a couple hours at a time, to sleeping around 12 hours straight.  Success!  I feel like a whole new person; I have a short term memory again.  Delightful.  However, if you are like me and enjoying researching things to death, here is how our first week went, in detail:

Bedtime:

I wasn’t planning on starting this night.  I did her bedtime routine starting at 5:30 and could not get her to sleep (her usual bedtime was 6:00).  She refused to nurse down and just wanted to play so I put her in the crib after over an hour of trying and told Mr SH (while Wonder Baby wailed in the background) that I was starting sleep training.  Tonight!  Right now!  See you later!  Then I went into the bedroom and turned out the lights.  This was at 6:45.  I sat on the bed and read the rest of the sleep training manual in the dark on the ipod.  I had already decided that picking her up or touching her at all just made her more distressed so I stuck to being a calm presence in the room and reassuring her with my voice.  For the first hour and a bit she mostly played and chatted with occasional bits of crying.  Then from 8-8:50 she just cried.  This was kind of tough, but I was sure I was making the right decision so I stuck with it.  I continued to reassure her verbally and I could tell that she was not feeling abandoned (I’ve heard that cry when I left her alone in the room) but was just very frustrated because she was tired and wanted to sleep but didn’t know how.  I knew that the gentler methods of teaching her hadn’t worked so she had to work this out on her own.  Eventually she started sitting and swaying and then would stand up and yell.  Then sit and sway again.  And then she fell asleep.  I waited until she was solidly out, then went out of the room.

Night wakenings:

She woke at 11, but just kind of yelled and rolled over.  She woke at 1:50 and fussed and whined until 2:20 while I mumbled “nigh nigh, mommy’s here” from my bed.  Then she woke at 3:45 and cried hard.  Now I had been feeding her at pretty much every night wakening previously, so even though I knew she was old enough to night wean, I also knew she was legitimately hungry.  I held out for half an hour of wailing, then nursed her (sitting up, with her also sitting up so that she didn’t nurse to sleep) and she went back in her crib and slept until 7:45.  Even with the rather long and painful wakenings, it was the best night we had had in ages.

Nap #1

Now, this was the first day of naps.  Previously she had been taking all morning naps in the ergo on my back.  I did her routine at 9:50 (2ish hours after wake-up), then settled into the room with my ipod again where I watched my daily videos with Dana with headphones in.  She told me not to nurse at night anymore (how did she know?) so I agreed to be firmer with that.  Wonder Baby played for 20 minutes, cried for 25 minutes, then laid down and went to sleep at 10:50.  She was up at 11:20, so a half an hour nap.  But at least it was in her crib.

Nap #2

Nap routine at 1:15.  I stayed in the room and she would play and then lay down and then play and then lay down.  For an hour.  Then she fussed a bit and fell asleep.  She slept for 1 hour 15 min.

Bedtime:

Did bedtime routine from 6-6:30.  She fell asleep 20 minutes later with no crying.  What?  Amazing.

Night wakenings:

She woke at 9:50, I let her cry for ten minutes (magic 10, Dana says) then went in and she settled right away when I was in the room.  Then she woke at 2, 4, and 6 briefly but I didn’t nurse all night.  Up for the day at 7:15.

Nap #1 

Nap fail. I thought she was asleep and tried to leave and she freaked out.  I couldn’t settle her.  Honestly I was so tired of hanging out for hours in the bedroom surfing Pinterest on the ipod that I was going insane.  I gave her to her daddy and went to a coffee shop to sketch for an hour.

Nap #2

I put her down at 1:45, she went down with minimal fuss and slept for two hours.  Magic.

Bedtime:

She cried in protest as I set her in the crib, then immediately laid down and fell asleep.  Leaving me dumbstruck.  I waited 20 minutes to make sure she was settled and snuck out.

Night wakenings:

She cried briefly at 9:30, resettled without me going in and then slept until 6:20.  This was the first time in her entire life that she had slept more than four hours at a time!

Nap #1

Went down easy at 9:20 and slept 40 minutes.

Nap #2

Went down at 1:45, fell asleep after 5 minutes and slept 2 hours!

Bedtime:

Fell asleep easily at 6:20.

Night Wakenings:

She cried briefly at 7:30 and 8:30.  She also woke up and fussed for a minute or two sometime in the night.  Up for the day at 6:30

Nap #1

Cried from 8:20-9:10.  I had put her down when she looked tired, she almost fell asleep but then decided to fight it.  I left the room at 8:45 to make breakfast and checked in a couple times.  She ended up sleeping 45 min.

Nap #2

I put her down at 1:30, she cried 10 min and then slept 45 minutes.

Bedtime:

So this was the first night that I had both girls and no parental backup.  Toddler Girl did the bedtime routine with us (she likes to help massage the lotion on Wonder Baby’s tummy) and then we gave her a kiss and put her in the crib and left.  She cried all of two minutes and fell asleep at 6:20.

Night Wakenings:

She woke and cried briefly at 7, sometime in the night (didn’t look at the clock) and 5:45.  Then was up for the day at 6:30.

Nap #1

Tried to nap her in a playpen in Toddler Girl’s room.  Mr SH was sleeping all day in our room.  This is part of the reason I’ve been so slack on nap training before.  I put her down at 9:10.  She was quiet for 20 minutes (sleeping?  I wasn’t in the room) then woke up really upset and had somehow gotten out of her sleep sack.

Nap #2

Went down at 1:50 with minimal fuss and slept an hour and a half.

Bedtime:

Cried 10 minutes, was asleep by 6:20.

Night Wakenings:

She woke at 7, 9:30, and 5:45.  Up for the day at 6:30.

Nap #1

Cried from 8:30-9.  Slept half an hour.  Not great.

Nap #2

This nap was a hot mess.  She wouldn’t settle until I went in, then she slept 45 minutes.  I tried to lengthen it by moving her to Toddler Girl’s room (Mr SH was sleeping again but TG had woken up from her nap thanks to the crying) but she would be quiet for 15 min then cry for 15.  On and on for an hour.  All she wanted to do was nurse.  She was whiny and clingy all afternoon and TG got whiny and I thought I was going to lose it.  Then at dinner I noticed her cheeks were bright pink.  Teething.  Of course.

Bedtime:

Gave her some advil.  She went down without even a token protest, just snuggled up in her crib and went to sleep.

Night Wakenings:

She cried at 8:30, 4:30 and then woke up at 5:30.  Dana said not to let her get up until 6 or 6:30 or she will think 5:30 is morning.  So she cried for 45 minutes before I gave in and nursed her.  And then we got up.

Naps:

The morning naps continued to be hard so I tried moving to one nap a day.  I am now 16 days from the start of sleep training and her last two naps have finally gone pretty well.  Both times she has woken up too soon, but has gone back to sleep and gotten a long enough nap in the end.  She needs at least two hours if it’s her only nap, as she’s still not a year old.  Dana says that naps are harder and they were very much the hardest for me.  Partly because she struggles with them, and partly because I have trouble letting her cry when there are two other people sleeping in the house (for some reason it’s worse than night time, maybe because they don’t go back to sleep once they’re up).  Balancing the sleep of three people is very stressful for me, and my sleep always ends up at the bottom of the list.

Bedtime:

All week she went down easily.  Only one night did she cry, and it was for under ten minutes.  If that’s a bad night, then I’m a pretty happy mommy!

Night Wakenings:

She did alright at night, but all week she woke around 5 and screamed for an hour before I nursed her and got up for the day.   This suuuuuucked.  And it sucked for Mr SH as well.  TG slept through it, thankfully.  The last two mornings she has slept until after 6 so *knock wood* maybe she has finally learned that I won’t nurse her at that point in desperation for another hour of sleep.  I don’t doubt that she’s hungry by that point, but I am firm on night weaning and am so not waking up every morning at 5!  6 is the earliest I will consider, and I’m not really that wild about it.

– We are both so much less tired now!  Hooray!  I’m still not getting a good sleep every night, but it’s better.  I’m a poor sleeper myself, so it will take a bit before my body decides to stop waking up randomly.

– Her final bedtime is between 6 and 6:30.  I might try and scoot it a bit later, but I need time to get her to sleep before I start TG’s bedtime routine.  And she sleeps better when she goes down before 7.

– Naps.  Ugh.  I have high hopes that they will continue to improve this week.  I’m open to going back to a morning nap if she really seems to need it.  TG dropped her morning nap at 11 months, then picked it up again at 14 months and took two naps until 18 months, so I know that can happen.  I just want to be keeping an eye on what she needs.  Currently I’m aiming for a two hour nap at 12:30.  That at least gives me an hour or so of both girls napping together.

– I’m hopeful to move the girls into the same room soon, but I’m not sure I want both of them up at 6.  I’m hardly awake and I don’t mind only having the baby to chase at that point.  But it would be nice to have her out of our room.  I’ll keep you posted on this.

– Weaning.  The advantage to night weaning has been that she eats more solids during the day and her daytime nursing is a lot more predictable.  This means that I will be able to tell more easily when she drops a daytime feed for good.  I’m letting her self-wean, but I like to have some idea as to where we’re at.  I would have said that before this we were nursing 15 times in 24 hours and now it might be 5.  She wants to nurse to sleep at naptime which I have to fight, so I might try and shift her to eat a little earlier before she gets so sleepy.  She doesn’t like to nurse to sleep at bedtime (which is why we started this whole mess) and tonight she wouldn’t nurse at bedtime at all (we do it earlier in the routine now), and still fell asleep just fine.  Maybe she will drop that feed soon, which will be amazing.  I am happy to nurse, but it’s nice to have other people put her to sleep.  She takes a bottle but I can hardly get anything with a pump these days.  I was really hoping I would be able to pump in the mornings after night weaning, but my body adjusted really quickly and I’m lucky to get an ounce in an hour.  This is sad as I want to go away for a weekend in a couple months, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to pump a stash for her.

– It’s really nice to look forward to bedtime as a time of rest, I was going to bed feeling like night was just as much work as daytime.  Now it’s actually for sleeping.  I love sleeping!