Sleep Training

Neil has been a great baby but sleep has been hard.

To make this post more interesting, I'm adding pictures of the weird positions Neil sleeps in

Neil's doctor recommended the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, so I bought that on my Kindle. I would recommend buying this type of book in paperback or hard copy because it's one that you want to bounce around in and it's really hard to do that and find where you want to be on electronic format. But this seems like a good book. I later also bought Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems based on a recommendation from a friend who has a baby exactly 6 months (to the day and hour!) older than Neil.

Most of these pictures were taken with our video camera which we use for a monitor.

After reading both of these books we realized that Neil has two sleep issues right now.

One is a bedtime that's too late- he will not go down for the night until 11:30 or 12:00 (midnight). It doesn't matter if we start the bedtime routine earlier, or even if we get him down in the crib earlier. If it's before 11:30 or midnight, he treats it like a nap and sleeps from 10-45 minutes, then is wide awake again.

The other is a sleep association. He goes to sleep fine at daycare in the pack and play; in fact they have told me he's their best sleeper. (I keep asking how they do it.) When he's home, he doesn't nap very well unless one of us is holding him, and bedtime is the worst part. The sleep association is wanting to be held to go to sleep or stay asleep. When we put him to bed, it's like walking a tightrope. We have to let him fall completely asleep in our arms, and then very gently and carefully, slowly walk to his room, slowly lower him into the crib, tentatively pull our arms out from under him, maybe leave a hand or arm on him for another few minutes, and the entire time we are watching for his eyes to pop open and the screaming to start if we don't do it just right or he isn't sound asleep enough. If he wakes up, then we have to hold him until he again falls deep asleep before attempting the crib again.

With the sleep association, it seems to be more just when he initially goes to bed; unless he's having a sleep regression he will stay in the crib just fine until the morning. We have a video monitor that is on all night and I've seen him wake up in the middle of the night, move around with eyes wide open, and go back to sleep on his own. So between that and daycare, we knew that he could soothe himself to sleep on his own.

We have been exhausted, especially since we get up early. I get up before 5am each morning to get to work around 6:15-6:30. Dave would usually stay up later with him getting him to sleep while I went to bed but often I laid in bed knowing that they weren't sleeping and unable to sleep myself. So we decided to try sleep training per the Ferber method (Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems). We actually tried it at about 4 and a half months but after reading Ferber's book I realized that we tried it too early (moreso too early at night not really age wise), before Neil's natural bedtime, so he just cried and screamed and we eventually gave up. We wanted to wait until he was at least 5 months old and give it a few weeks before trying again.

We decided to do this 4th of July weekend because we kind of had 4 days off where we could catch up on sleep. I say kind of because we hadn't planned on taking July 5th off but the daycare was closed (that's another story) so we had to stay home. I did do some work at home, and so did Dave (he has month close so we didn't know whether or not he could actually stay home until July 3rd) while the other one paid attention to Neil.

I'm typing this as we've completed 3 nights and we have definitely seen improvements so far. Knock on wood for me, ok? I wanted to write down how this worked for us though with times and how it lined up with Ferber's method.

He even ends up upside down sometimes.

July 3rd we kept Neil up and started the bedtime routine at around 10:30-10:45. We did the bedtime routine and put him in his crib at 11:00pm. The first night per the Ferber method, you check on the baby at 3 minutes, then 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, and keep checking every 10 minutes until they fall asleep. When you check them, you do not pick them up, you just let them know that you are there and everything is ok, and make sure that they are fine for your own peace of mind.

11:00 bed
11:04 check (4 minutes)
11:14 check (10 minutes)
11:26 check (12 minutes)
11:37 check (11 minutes)
11:58 check (21 minutes)
12:05 sleep (7 minutes)
1 hour and 5 minutes total

If we didn't follow the timing it was because Neil seemed to be calming down so we waited until the crying ramped up in case he was self soothing himself. Also, I didn't restart the timer until we (usually Dave, he did most of the checking) actually left the room again. We made sure we were not in there longer than a minute or two though and most of the time it was under a minute.

The next night we started the bedtime routine at 10:00 because we gave Neil a bath. He was tired from the night before so he was really sleepy as I was nursing him so we decided to just try and put him in the crib earlier. The book says to address one sleep issue at a time, but he was so tired it did seem to work getting him down for the night slightly earlier (and we really didn't put him to bed that much earlier). Per the book the second night you are supposed to check on a baby at 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then every 12 minutes until they fall asleep.

10:47 bed
10:56 check (9 minutes)
11:08 check (12 minutes)
11:21 check (13 minutes)
11:31 sleep (10 minutes)
44 minutes total

By the third night this was both wearing on us. Although the second night was better, it's really hard to hear your baby crying and not go get him. We waited until about 10:00 or so to start the bedtime routine and gave him a bath again. He was extremely cranky, and we figured it was because he was tired. But I didn't want to keep trying to move up his bedtime yet and was worried if we tried that he's just sleep like a nap and the night would be even later. So we gave him a bath again to stretch out the routine, even though he didn't really need it. He fell pretty sound asleep nursing, but Dave burped him and that woke him up so he was wide eyed before we actually put him in the crib.

10:56 bed
11:05 sleep
9 minutes total, no checks

This is how Neil passed out the 3rd night of sleep training

We were shocked that we didn't check on him once! I'm not sure yet if this was just because he was so tired but it does seem like this method is working so far. I'll either give an update in a separate blog post or in the 6 month update to talk about how this continued.

Just a few things I found interesting...

Even though we tried to keep his bedtime consistent and we went with what seems like his natural bedtime, if you look at the progression, he went to sleep half an hour earlier each night (12:05, 11:31, then 11:05). We woke him up when we would normally wake him up to take him to daycare each morning. Dave normally does wake him up so I know he needs more sleep at night (because he doesn't wake up on his own) but we'll work on that once we have him established to go to sleep on his own in the crib.

When he fell asleep, the first two nights it was mid cry/scream. He did seem to calm down a bit on his own so we didn't go in to check on him but those weren't the times he fell asleep. You just heard crying/screaming and all of a sudden nothing. When we looked at the monitor he was out cold, asleep. It was such a relief and kind of cute other than the fact that we were drained from hearing him so upset.

We are also working on naps and getting him in the cribs for naps but haven't gotten there yet. I will try to write a separate post on that because this one is already long.

My biggest worry now is that he's such a cuddle bug and we're having to make him sleep anywhere but in our arms, including for nap time. I really enjoy some of our cuddle time when he does sleep so I have to admit I'm sad that I'm losing that and thinking I might not be able to do that again :( or he may go back to needing us to get him to sleep at night. Time will tell.

Neil still wakes up happy with a big smile on his face, and sleeps soundly at night once he falls asleep. I was also worried that this would cause him to start waking up at night but he has continued to sleep through the night!

The only picture not from our video camera.
Guess we need a bumper!
(We do have a breathable one.)