sleep training

Morgan got a present for her 4 month birthday, I taught her how to put herself to sleep!

Before you all get up in arms about the ‘cry it out’ method and how cruel it is, let me first say everyone’s got to what’s right for them. If you want to soothe your baby to sleep til he/she is a year old… or more, go for it. I simply can’t. I’d lose my mind.

There was this wonderful phase when Morgan was just two months old and she basically slept through the night for about a month. I blogged about it here  It made me think things would just improve from there on out, and I’d never have to worry about “training” her to sleep. And for the zillionth time since I became a mom I was SO WRONG.

We all got colds shortly after that post and so naturally she slept less and needed me more… and I went. And she became accustomed to the comfort of mom & nursing every few hours.

I lasted six weeks before I hit the wall. And by that I mean I could not take the sleep loss for A.SINGLE.SECOND.LONGER. So, that day I dug up a website link that I’d used three years ago when Maya was about the same age. I re-read the 200 page book in about 3 hours of sleep deprived mania. I immediately, and I mean at the very next nap that Morgan took, decided to implement the approach recommended by the author. It worked so effectively I could hardly believe it. What had I been waiting for?

So the online book I read is called “The Sleep Sense Program” by Dana Obleman, and it explains (with specific strategies) how to train your child to soothe him/herself to sleep starting at 3 months or older. It’s largely based on the philosophy put forth by Weissbluth in his book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. It has very specific strategies and it does involve letting your baby cry, sorry to those of you who are offended by this. That said, I’m one of the lucky ones because Morgan never cried for more than 10 minutes. Really the max was 7, I think.

And after 3 nights, we’re golden. She HAD been waking up every 2 hours (and I was losing my mind).  The first night of ‘The Sleep Sense Program’, she slept 4 hours, then 3 hours, then another 3 and then another 3–a vast improvement. Not only that, she started taking longer naps during the day. The next night it was 5 hours and then 3 and 3. Last night it was 6 and then almost 4 more, plus long naps again. Each time she woke to nurse and went right back to sleep after I put her in bed again. I’m also getting her to bed at the same time as Maya-bonus: my husband and I actually get some time alone together in the evenings again.

So, do what’s right for you. But if you’re struggling and sleep deprived and don’t know what else to do, I urge you to try this program because it could really work. Trust me, there’s much more to it than plunking your kid in her crib and leaving her to cry. There’s a method, a system. And if you are a sleep starved mother, you could regain your sanity!

Carsick

Last weekend, we were on our way to a little girl’s birthday party just outside of the city. To get there, one has to travel on a narrow twisty road for quite some time. As usual, we were running late. So, when Maya woke up from her morning nap, we fed her a big breakfast, scurried into the car and drove a little faster than usual. Might I emphasize that I drove fast on a road with sharp windy turns… mistake number 1…

Maya has been complaining in the car quite a bit lately. She seems to shout and whine quite a bit when I’m driving and I’ve been thinking it’s just because she’s so active and she wants to get out and move around. So, when she was crying a bit on this particular drive my husband and I took turns singing songs to her and whistling, all of which we’ve discovered are helpful in soothing her (and our nerves) when she’s yelling from the backseat.

We had just turned off the main road into the subdivision where our friends live when Maya really picked up the pace on the complaining. She starting kind of moaning and groaning and we just kept on singing and telling her “we’re almost there!”. Then the groaning turned into the most awful baby vomiting sound you have ever heard. Seriously, it was nasty and I looked into my rear view mirror just in time to see her breakfast spewing out all over her adorable party outfit and the car seat. Yum yum!  Mistake number 2: not realizing that our little girl’s complaining was due to nausea…

We pulled over and got the bulk of the mess wiped away and then continued on to our friend’s house where we got Maya and the car mostly cleaned up. That evening I spent a considerable amount of time trying to dismantle the car seat and destroy the fowl odor of vomit. But even after about an hour of scrubbing and letting it dry out overnight, it still kind of smells faintly of vomit. It’s the buckles that are the primary problem. If anyone has any tips on how to get rid of the stench, I’m welcoming suggestions from others experienced in the art of cleaning baby barf–isn’t life grand?!

Working Mom

Going back to work was as good and as bad as I expected. I rediscovered the fact that I love my job and so that was pretty great. But, man, I was tired. Getting up at 5:30 to get myself and my one-year-old girl out the door in time to drop her at daycare and get to work on time.

Maya had a difficult first few days at daycare. As I had mentioned before, we chose a small daycare at the home of a friend of mine. My husband and I chose this over a bigger daycare in the same building where I work as a teacher. I knew the people running the programs at both places and they all seemed more than competent, but I just felt overwhelmingly (and my husband agreed) that it was better for Maya to be at a house with fewer kids, than in a larger, more institutional setting (even if the larger place was in the same building as my school).  Plus, the daycare at my friend’s house is close to our house (a 5 minute drive) which meant that Maya would not have to spend an extra hour each day commuting in the car with me.

So much thought and deliberation went into my decision to choose the daycare that we did. Nevertheless, I found I was totally second guessing our decision at the last minute, and kind of panicking about whether we’d made the right choice. Now, I am feeling much much better about our decision because, after about three days of mega-crying, Maya started really enjoying daycare. She bonded with my friend who runs the program, she naps on her usual schedule, and interacts happily with all the other kids. She still cries when I drop her off but I’m told it stops shortly after I leave. That said, those first few days were rough on both of us and I cried in the car a few times on my way to work. It was really hard to pick up Maya all red-eyed and exhausted from those first trying days. Thankfully, it worked out for the best. I don’t know what I’d have done if it didn’t because the waiting lists for daycares accepting kids in Maya’s age group are long. It would have been hard to find anything else.

The holidays were a nice reprieve after three weeks of work and we’ve spent loads of quality time together as a family over the past two weeks. In two days, we’re back the grind and it’ll be months before we have a break again. I am not looking forward to expending the energy that’s required of me for the next while (it’s going to be exhausting). But, thankfully, I have a supportive husband, and a great job (with a flexible employer) and all these things make this adjustment period easier to handle. So, here we go…

All Night Long

At long last, my baby girl is sleeping through the night. By that I mean she’s sleeping for 10 hours in a row… that counts as all night, doesn’t it? She goes to sleep around 7pm and wakes up at 5ish and then, after a quick feed, goes back to sleep until 7 or 7:30. How can I find the words to express what a heavenly feeling it is for me to have a few hours of relaxing time in the evening after she goes to bed, and then go to sleep for 8 hours in a row?! It’s like rejoining the world of the living after so many months of sleep deprivation.

So, how’d we get to this point? Up until a few weeks ago, Maya was napping well and going down to sleep without much fussing but we were still dealing with night wakings (at least 2 per night… sometimes 3 or 4). This was partly my fault, as I was helping to create a night waking habit by going to her when she woke up. I was doing this because we’d had some issues with Maya’s weight gain. She’s always been a lightweight, but she had dropped from the 25th percentile to the 3rd percentile and the doctor had encouraged me to feed her a little extra, and we were watching her weight closely. I started to worry when she woke up that, perhaps, she was hungry. So I’d go nurse her quickly in the night, and she’d go right back to sleep. But, when we went for her 9 month check-up and Maya had climbed up to the 10th percentile for weight and the doctor asked about her sleeping habits, I told her that there were still some night wakings, and my doctor responded gently, “it’s time to let her cry”. She went on to tell me about medical research that has proven that sleep problems from infancy often carry over into childhood and even adulthood. She emphasized the importance of nipping those problems in the bud now, especially now that there are no more concerns about Maya’s weight. So, the next night when she woke up at 2am, I had resolved not to go to her, she cried a bit, but she did go back to sleep on her own. Ever since then it’s been pretty smooth sailing–touch wood… no doubt there’ll be more difficult periods ahead with teething or illness, but for now I’m relishing in the pleasure of a full night’s sleep–yay!

Quick Update

We’re down to 15 minutes of complaining at nap time & bedtime before Maya falls asleep. Some screaming is involved but it’s brief and I don’t have to go in and help Maya lie back down any more. Now, if only she wasn’t waking up every few hours in the night… if it isn’t one thing…

There is Hope

I think I have this whole standing and screaming thing figured out (see previous post if you have no idea what I’m talking about)… well, that’s not true, I don’t totally understand why it started but I think I know how to help Maya get herself to sleep once again. I read more from an online sleep program called The Sleep Sense Program by a woman named Dana Obleman. She has an entire chapter of her book devoted to the topic of common sleep problems. Ultimately, she says that this whole standing and screaming thing is common for babies who have just learned to stand up. The key problem is that they figure out how to stand up but they often don’t know how to lay themselves back down yet. So, at the advice of some great mommy friends–thank you T., J., N. & A.–at bedtime tonight, after I put her down and she began to scream, I went into her room about every 20 mins and gently laid her back down & said (as I always do), “goodnight, Maya, I love you, time for sleep…” and then I quickly left the room. After I went back in the room for the third time she fell asleep. It was a total of 75 mins of crying before she was asleep and she has stayed asleep for several hours now. I’m pretty sure she’s down for the night and it didn’t take as long as last night. And what’s even better is that she soothed herself to sleep this time, instead of me doing it for her. I felt terrible, but I really wanted her to figure out how to sleep by herself, as she had always done before. I feel like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel now that she got herself to sleep on her own again. I think she’ll just improve from here on out… although I’m sure I’ll find out tomorrow at nap time. The books I’ve read say that usually when you allow a child to ‘cry it out’, it takes about 3 nights before the screaming bouts really stop. I’m not sure if tonight is night #1 or #2 since last night I couldn’t take it after 90 mins of intense screaming so I went in and nursed my little girl who fell asleep almost instantly because she was so exhausted from standing and crying for so long. Poor baby!

One positive thing is that when Maya does get herself to sleep and has a good long rest, she is in the best mood the next day, ready for lots of play time and learning. I’m looking forward to seeing her smiling face in the morning!

A Whole New Scream

So, Maya figured out how to crawl and cruise at about 6 months of age. This has been tiring, but kind of exciting too. Then, this past week (at the age of 8 months) she started pulling herself up to a standing position which seems like a fun new development, except that it isn’t fun at all. This is because she has figured out how to stand in her crib. And for those who don’t know this, when a baby learns a new skill she/he generally just wants to practice that skill more than anything else, especially when given the choice of practicing the skill or going to sleep. This means that now when I put Maya down for a nap (which always caused her to complain a bit before drifting off to sleep), she goes over to the crib railing, pulls herself up to standing and starts crying. Because she does this from a standing position, she can’t easily fall asleep and so instead she gets very very worked up and starts to scream at a new high pitched lilt that I’m sure it going to shatter the glass in our windows… seriously, it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before. If I go into her room to get her (which I’ve been doing to make sure she’s not injured or something), she stops crying immediately and usually gives me a big grin or even a chuckle, as if to say, “haha it worked! Now let’s play, mom!” Yes, she’s manipulating me. She’s crying in protest and has figured out that this new scream which sounds like she’s dying, will bring me running to her side so that she doesn’t have to fall asleep by herself.

After consulting friends and family and my trusty sleep book, and taking her temperature to make sure she wasn’t ill, I decided to let her scream for up to one hour if that’s what it took. Surely she’d get tired and fall asleep within an hour, right? Wrong! She kept this up for a whole hour this morning. I don’t think she’s ever cried so long. It was so hard not to go get her, but my husband and I were in agreement that this was what needed to happen. After an hour, I decided to see if she was tired enough that she’d settle down with a little nursing and rocking, which she did almost instantly after I went to her. She’s been asleep for two hours now, which is longer than her usual morning nap, but surely she tired herself out quite a lot. I’m glad she’s sleeping but I’m not looking forward to doing this again for her second nap today and then once more at bedtime, but I think I am going to have to.

I know some people think that letting a child cry him/herself to sleep is not healthy and can lead to feelings of insecurity or mistrust later in life. I’ve commented on this in a previous post as well. However, according to Dr. Mark Weissbluth, whose advice has helped me since Maya was 6 weeks old, when you let a child cry at nap time or at bed time, you are actually doing him/her a favor. Learning to fall asleep unassisted is an important skill that every person must learn at some point. Studies show that not allowing your child to do this can lead to sleep problems such as insomnia in later years. Maya is at an age where she needs to sleep but does not always want to sleep. Just as I won’t give her junk food to eat when she is older just because she cries for want of it, I will ensure that she develops healthy sleep habits now by teaching her that at nap time crying will not lead me to pick her up if what she needs is sleep. This doesn’t mean that I think that you shouldn’t respond to your child whenever he/she cries. Rather, you should respond except when he/she is protesting and is clearly in need of sleep. It isn’t easy, but I actually think the “let cry” method helps a child much more than it hinders his/her development.