Saturday, July 27, 2013

Sleep Training

Its 3:23 AM and after 7 months of only getting blocks of 3, 4, maybe an occasional 5 hours of sleep at a time, it's time to get serious about sleep!  So we have a social baby, she is a great morning napper, a joy as a lunch date, the best in a stroller, and even good at falling asleep consistently when she gets fussy in the evening at 7pm BUT she wakes up frequently (~3 times) pretty much every night and we've used nursing and pacifier to get her back to sleep.  After 200+ nights of hoping and wondering if she's too young, too hungry, teething or the like its time to believe she is ready to sleep.
In June, at 5 months, we tried a few nights of the Ferber method (basically going into the room at regular intervals of increasing time until baby goes to sleep) and got her from 1am wake ups (after her regular 10pm wakeup and feeding) to 3am wakeups, but after a busy July the wakeups have started to revert not improve.  With going back to work on the horizon, getting a consistently good nights sleep is necessary for the whole family, including the dogs, who by the way have their own issues demanding to be fed at insane hours like 5am.  
So here we are on night one of Ferber take 2 at 3:30am up since 2am wakeup, getting started on a Friday night now Saturday morning given my husband is doing a large part of the checkins since my going into the room and not feeding can be more disturbing than calming, yes an exciting way to spend our weekend, but at this point we really are willing to do what it takes for sleep.  Tonight it's going into the room after 3 minutes, 5 minutes, then every 10 minutes there after and giving a calming pat (no talking, soothing or feeding) until she can go back to sleep.  There are times it seems the going in can upset her more, but we are following the method and now she is laying in the crib babbling while we lay awake in bed with a timer and I contemplate if I actually will be able to remember how to sleep 8 hours if this is successful...will report back.
For summary of the method and interval times by night:
http://noobmommy.com/2008/11/to-ferberize-or-not-to-ferberize.html

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