Our Sleep Story

Oh sleep, truly the most elusive thing when you have a baby. When these cute little creatures first enter our lives they have night time parties and crash all day long. Thanks a lot nature, I just had a 32 hour labour, major surgery, a child who doesn't feed properly and now you design them to have nights and days mixed up. WTF did I ever do to you!?

Thankfully, by some miracle these tiny humans sort out their shit and start sleeping more at night and having daytime parties. I had a friend recommend early on "The Baby Whisperer" sleep book. I had every intention of following this method of early sleep training but when our feeding problems persisted it was next to impossible and I quickly abandoned structured feeding for on demand feedings. Then Boo Bear (aka tiny human, aka Ella Bean, aka Wiggles) was diagnosed with acid reflux and we had a very fussy baby on our hands.

Now, 3 months into this adventure this Momma wants her evenings and nights back.

Here's how it was BEFORE we started sleep training. Ella would wake up around 6am (give or take). Sometimes she would eat a little then sleep some more, sometimes not. Then around 9am she would get fussy and I would feed her another bottle until she fell asleep. She would nap for a short time (45 -1hr if I was lucky). Then she would wake up crying, eat some more, spend some time being happy and then be fussy and feed to sleep again. This cycle goes all day until late afternoon when the fussiness really ramped up. To the point where she couldn't even calm down enough to eat. We had a seriously over tired baby on our hands. She usually wouldn't be down for the night until 10pm ish. Not exactly convenient for us. She needed to be tended to on a regular basis, especially at night time. And yet again, she needed to be fed to fall asleep.

Now I didn't actually mind the eating to fall asleep thing because it was easy. She was quiet and content, but we were clearly fostering a habit. Not to mention the middle of the night bullshit that was still going on. As Dr. Ferber states in his book "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" a 3 month old baby no longer has a nutritional need for a middle of the night feeding. They can go 10 hours without eating at night and be just fine. Well Miss Ella had created a habit of waking between 1:30 and 2:30 (depending when she fell asleep) and wanted to eat to fall back asleep (starting to sense the issue?). Now, it's only 1 time at night but when you go to sleep at 11pm then wake up a couple hours later, feed her, put her down, and go back to sleep only to wake up another few hours later, it gets tiring.

How does one fix this problem....

There are a lot of different methods out there and everyone has an opinion on them. I bought 4 sleep books used from a swap group and had read an article that sort of cleared up the Cry It Out (CIO) method. Initially, I didn't think I would be able to listen to Ella cry without being there to comfort her, but in the past few weeks her cries have become less jarring. I decided (and Steve supported) to use Dr. Ferber's method. The CIO method.

Now before you go all "how can you let her cry" or "poor baby, she must feel abandoned" or "your going to cause brain damage" blah blah blah... Let me explain the true process, it's really not so bad.

It's naptime (or bedtime) and you put baby down awake (but ready for sleep). I give her a rub on the tummy and a kiss on the forehead and leave the room. Because this isn't her usual way to go to sleep she is naturally not impressed with me. She cries. After 5 minutes I go back in, rub her tummy, tell her everything is ok and that I'm just outside her room. I leave the room again, even if she is still crying. This time I wait 10 minutes. If she is still crying I repeat the process. Enter, rub tummy, tell her its ok, leave. Now, I wait 15 minutes.  Repeat this every 15 minutes until she falls asleep. If it's naptime, only leave her for an hour and then abandon the process and try again for her next nap.

Soooo I bet your wondering how this has all worked out for me... Well that first night sucked big time! She was right pissed off with us. She fell asleep eating at 8pm (I hadn't decided to start that night until after putting her down and her waking up instantly, again, like she always does). That's when it began. She took an hour or so to finally go down. Slept til midnight-ish. Was up for another 45 - 1 hour. Steve and I alternated going in. Then she had another wake up but went down much faster. Then she decided to wake up 40 mins earlier than what we wanted her wake time to be. We chose to wait til that wake up time to get her up for the day (we did go in to soothe though).

Now for the daytime routine... When she wakes up from a nap we feed her a full bottle and then we have waketime. Playing, reading books, eating her monkey etc. Then when she shows signs of tiredness we put her down for sleep. As per the book "Baby Wise" this process is about 3 hours long. And Ella was right on schedule. We repeated this all day and by her 3rd nap she was falling asleep with less than 5 minutes of crying. 


We are only 24 hours into this process but she has already made huge strides! The one thing that still needs some work is her nap length. "Baby Wise" explains that a baby who wakes up crying after a nap hasn't had enough sleep. They should wake up content and cooing. We are not there yet. She still wakes up after every nap (which is usually only 45 minutes to an hour) crying loudly. The suggestion is that you allow her to cry for 10 minutes and she should settle back down and sleep a while longer. I'll be adding that to the mix tomorrow.

So far tonight she napped at 5:30, woke up at 6:30 crying, she ate, couldnt stay awake so I put her back down. After a little fussing she went back to sleep and now at 9:30 she is still asleep. I'm curious to see how overnight goes. I'll be sure to update this in a week and let you know how much has changed.

Here's to sleeping through the night!

Night 2: she slept from 8pm to 6:30am. Woke up happy. 

Day 2: went down for her naps well. Cries no more than 10mins. Then at 5 we put her down and had to abandon nap time after an hour of crying. She had another bottle (half) then she stayed up til 730 when she looked tired. 30mins in she was still crying. We fed her and she fell asleep. Not ideal but at some point we needed to know she ate enough. 

Night 3: she woke up at midnight per usual but this time took 30 mins to settle down. One belly rub and kiss from me which seemed to make it worse. A brief waking at 2 then up and happy at 630.

**UPDATE**

1 MONTH LATER:

Our lil babe sleeps through the night, every single night (except last night which I'm pretty sure is linked to "4 month sleep regression). She now naps well during the day and wakes up from her naps happy and smiling. Very rarely will she wake up crying. We finally have a well rested and happy baby! She giggles and smiles and plays contently by herself or with us. It is a huge change!

Letting her cry for short periods of time has actually helped us distinguish her cries more accurately. She doesn't really even cry most of the time, its more  like an annoyed fuss. The one downside is that I feel quite tied to her schedule. She can usually stay up for 1.5 - 2 hours after waking up from a nap. Much longer than that and she gets grumpy and has a hard time falling asleep (she's OVERtired). If she falls asleep in the car I can't move her from the car seat because she will wake up, she also doesnt sleep long enough in the car seat.

In general though, sleep training was the best thing we ever did for our family. On top of sleep training, sticking to a schedule of SLEEP, EAT, PLAY, SLEEP is vital!