Anyway, by 6 months old our sleep situation with Lennon got out of control. We’d get home from daycare, eat dinner, maybe go for a walk and then by 7:30 either Dave or I would have to bring him to our bed for the night to get him settled. One of us would brush our teeth and get ready for bed & the other would lay with Lennon, then we’d switch off. It had become totally ridiculous and unsustainable. At 4 months, I decided it would be a good idea to have him sleep in his own room. It was tough the first time, but after that he started only getting up once a night. I was pumped and wondered why we waited so long to transfer him to his crib. Those were my famous last words. I don’t know if Lennon started getting more aware that we were leaving him in his crib at night, if he was going through a developmental milestone, or what, but he started having a hard time settling again. We had to spend a couple hours at night to get him settled in his crib. In hindsight we should have let him CIO at that point, but I really wanted that to be our last resort. On one particularly hard night we brought him to bed with us and he fell asleep instantaneously. This started our habit of bringing him to bed again every night. Most nights we didn’t even try settling him in his crib because we knew our bed was a sure thing. At that point I knew he was pretty dependent on us & that it would take some major action to change this habit. I am a sleep-whore & I needed to get this under control.
We had never intended to co-sleep with our baby. I hated not
having time to get things in order in the evenings, let alone have a
conversation with Dave or spend an hour as just the two of us. I realized
quickly that we were probably going to have to let the kid cry-it-out if we
wanted him to sleep in his crib. For
over a month we put off the inevitable “sleep training”. Weekends away, hot
summer nights, colds, diarrhea, teething….eventually I realized there was
always going to be an excuse and we just needed to start it. Our first attempt
failed. He cried off and on for two hours and we ended up brining him to bed
with us. It was a bad idea to start on a Monday after a vacation weekend. We
decided to push it off a few days so it landed on the weekend.
Dave and I really had to sit down and make a plan together. A
plan that we both agreed on, & that we could hold one another accountable
to. There’s nothing worse than arguing in the middle of the night with a
screaming baby in the background. It sounds crazy that we had to write out an
actual plan just for sleep. I always thought it was such a natural process! For
Lennon it was not. I struggle with structure so this part was tough for me, but
I just kept thinking about how badly I wanted my nights back.
So D day arrived and we equipped ourselves with a movie and
pint of Ben & Jerry’s. The first night was terrible. We did our little
nighttime routine, laid him in his crib and he proceeded to cry for 55 minutes.
He fell asleep, but continued to wake up in half hour intervals for a couple more
hours. Knowing I am not the emotionally strong one of the group, Dave took the
first night. Lennon finally fell asleep again around 10:30 and didn’t wake
until 1:30. He took his bottle, got a diaper change and proceeded to sleep
until about 7:00. It was a descent second half of the night for the little guy.
The next night he was really tired so I put him down around 6:30. The little
booger cried for just 16 minutes and then drifted off into sleepy land. We were
on egg shells the rest of the evening, but he didn’t wake up until 11:00. We
gave him a bottle and a changing and he settled right back to sleep. The next
morning he didn’t wake until we had to get him up for daycare. Since then we’ve had some good nights &
some bad, but for the most part he settles without crying and only gets up once
for a little snack. This week for whatever reason he’s been waking at about
10:30, we feed him and then he cries for a good 45 minutes or so. I don’t
pretend to know why, but I hope it ends soon.
I’m not naïve enough to think that our sleep problems are
resolved. Lennon is not quite 7 months old so we’ve got plenty of time for more
issues to pop up. I know we’ll have set-backs after trips, illnesses, developmental
milestones, etc. It takes baby steps, but just getting that extra hour or two
in the evenings has been amazing. I feel like I’ve gotten so much time back. You’d
think my house would be cleaner ;).
A couple notes; Dave and I both read “The Sleep Easy
Solution.” Basically, it promotes a very consistent bedtime routine & going
in to comfort your baby in intervals until they fall asleep on their own. The
book tells you not to touch your baby, but to just let them know you’re there
and to stay no longer than 30 seconds. That part of the book did not work for
us. Lennon would look at us like “why the hell are you in here, but not picking
me up?” So we decided to go cold turkey on the poor kid. The book also mentions
“dream feeding” so your child doesn’t associate crying in the night with
getting a bottle. They say to go in at the same time every night and feed your
baby basically while they’re still asleep. Every night there’s that small
chance that Lennon will sleep through the night, so the hell if I’m going in
there to feed him if he’s not crying. We
forewent that option originally, but now that he’s having these little crying
episodes I’m considering trying it.
Every kid is different, but I think we learned a major
lesson here that bad habits can creep up on you. People kept telling me “you can’t
hold your baby enough,” & “just do what you have to do to get by.” I think
I took those solid pieces of advice and ran with them. I don’t regret the
things we did sleep-wise, you live and learn. I just think we made it harder on
ourselves and Lennon by letting it get as far as it did. The CIO method is not
for the faint of heart. There are two sides to every method and of course
hearing your baby cry is terrible. I questioned myself every second that I
could hear him screaming from his crib. “Will this emotionally damage him?”,
“Is he going to hate us in the morning?”, “Can a kid die from crying this
hard?”…ha, seriously. I really don’t know the answers, but sometimes you just
have to make a decision and run with it. I know there are “no cry” or “cry less”
methods that probably work too. I have
read that they typically take longer, but I would maybe try that out next time.
Point being, CIO worked for us, but it was really tough & I hope with
future children it doesn’t get to that point. Amen.
Glad you started reading?
Happy Mid-Week!
Erin
