I think I’ve successfully sleep trained Baby Pizza. It’s only been two weeks, so I may be writing this prematurely and regret saying so in a few weeks. We are also traveling this week, so I’m not sure how that will impact Baby Pizza’s recent sleep changes. But I decided to share anyway because I am so relieved that it worked and that she has been sleeping through the night.

I shared about Baby Pizza’s sleep in this post when she was 7 months old and it only got worse as time progressed.  The middle of the night wakings were getting especially difficult because what worked to put her to sleep for a few weeks would all too quickly stop being effective and I would resort to trying a new tactic. I used to be able to feed her a bottle, put her right in the crib awake, and she would drift to sleep. But then she started to sit up and cry for longer periods. I started to change my methods so that I could get her to completely fall asleep before I left her room; I was putting my hand on her chest, rocking her, walking around with her in the carrier, and that’s just to name a few.

On one particular night, I was nearing my breaking point. I had just left Baby Pizza’s room at 4am after trying to get her to fall back asleep for two hours. It was the third night in a row that it took nearly two hours to get her to fall back asleep. I climbed into bed, so frustrated and googled something like, “why does my 13 month old not sleep through the night” and came across forums where moms were saying that their 2 year old’s were still waking up frequently in the night. As I imagined still waking up in the middle of the night for another year, I decided it was time to do something about it. The lack of sleep was impacting me in significant ways. I was waking up irritated and exhausted EVERY morning; Mr. Pizza and I were getting more snippy with each other; the idea of Mr. Pizza and I both leaving the girls with someone, even once they were asleep, stressed me out because I didn’t know when Baby Pizza would wake up and what would actually help her fall back asleep. I even started to think that maybe she had some sort of sleep disorder or that I just needed to accept that she was simply a poor sleeper.

I knew I needed to at least give sleep training a try. I kept putting it off, hoping she would be able to figure it out on her own eventually. I read in this post that her current age was a good time to sleep train, so I told myself that I would start as soon as we settled back from our trip. In the meantime, I started to work on slowly eliminating her night feedings (which didn’t seem like it was helping much anymore). I also wasn’t sure how to best tackle sleep training, so I put Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems on hold at the library since I heard parents talk about being successful with the Ferber method.

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I had this all sort of planned out, but then two weeks ago, I woke up at 2 am to Baby Pizza crying. I looked over at the monitor and just turned the sound off. I was SO tired. I could still hear her crying, but my body was not wanting to move. I laid awake for an hour while she cried and then I drifted off to sleep (which I’m hoping happened because she quieted down and fell asleep right around then too).

I was so excited when I woke up the next morning at 5:30 am by her voice. Although it wasn’t my intention to sleep train before my trip, I wanted that night to count for something, so the next night, I did the same thing. I let her cry it out in the middle of the night and she cried for about 20 minutes and fell asleep. Naps were difficult that day and when we put her down for the night, she screamed on and off for almost 30 min. I remember hearing that sleep training is most difficult on the second or third day, so I pressed on. When she woke in the middle of the night, it took Baby Pizza 10 min to fall back asleep.

After that night, I haven’t heard much crying. Every so often, she still sits up and cries, but she has gotten much better and faster at falling back asleep. She has also gotten more comfortable with her bedtime routine. We read a few books and then I sing “Amazing Grace” while I hold her. She usually leans in towards the crib while I sing as if she is telling me that it’s okay for me to put her down. I then lay her down, finish the song and then say “goodnight, I love you” and walk out of the room. And then I see her again 11 hours later!!! Seriously, it’s amazing!  Naps have improved as well. Sometimes, she will start making quiet, crying sounds and sit up for 3-5 minutes and then I’ll check the monitor again only to see that she has fallen back asleep. Her naps are now about 1-1.5 hours long.

I didn’t do the Ferber method of checking in at increasing intervals, but I quickly realized that I would have a difficult time with consistently doing his method in the middle of the night when I’m feeling like a zombie. Even though Baby Pizza is sleeping through the night, I have still been reading sections of the book because it has helped me to see some of the obstacles I was creating when trying to put her back to sleep throughout the night.

I’m really hoping the traveling doesn’t change her sleeping habits too much. But for now, I will celebrate this win!

If you needed to sleep train, did your sleep training method go as planned?