Now God knows that this is a touchy subject amongst the parenting crowd, but I believe in sleep training a kid. And I believe in starting early. I hear all these stories from parents whose kids didn't sleep through the night until they were 1, 2, 3 years old and I think they are all insane. I'm not willing to give up that much of my life to my kid. Plus... how are you ever going to get baby-sitters? I guess you just never leave your kid?? Sorry... that's just not me.
So my sleep training "Bible" is Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. I am forever indebted to my friend, John, who originally told me about this book. Honestly, if he hadn't told me about it I probably never would have done it or thought it possible (since most of the posts online are from stay-at-home moms who don't agree with this) and I'd probably still have a kid who is a crappy sleeper (and I definitely wouldn't have a second kid if that was the case!). This book is great because it actually has real cited research and I think it's a good middle of the ground book. He doesn't overly promote one method over another. If you want to co-sleep, do it, if you want your kid in a crib, do it. Do whatever works for your family so that you are all well rested. It's so true.
Anyway, the big push in this book is that you have to work to get day sleep organized and then night sleep will consolidate following that. Oh... and kids need to go to bed much earlier than most parents put them to bed. Sarah has been sleeping from 7-7 since she was 4 months old and we cut out all night feedings at 5 months (and, honestly, we could have done it sooner but we were too stupid to realize she didn't need to eat, she just got used to the wake-up). I know a lot of parents (including my own) think that 7pm is too early for bedtime but I completely disagree. If it was too early then she wouldn't fall asleep and stay asleep until the next morning. And when my kid wakes up in the morning, she is happy, reading her books, chatting to her animals, etc. Much better than a screaming kid. And maybe Mark and I are just selfish, but we LOVE having that time in the evening to ourselves to either enjoy a later dinner, watch TV in peace, get some extra work done (okay, no one really likes working at night.. but at least we have the option if we need to get things done!), etc. And God knows that it's much easier to find a babysitter when you tell them they just have to get your kid in bed at 7pm and then they are good to go and basically just making sure your house doesn't burn down.
So anyway... this week I started making the push for daytime nap training for Luke. It's still very early and I'm not expecting major results yet. The book states that night sleep won't really consolidate until he is 6 weeks old. But if we can get the day routine going then that works for me. It's been 3 days now and I'd say we've had some good success. Basically, what it means at this point is that I make sure that he is back down to sleep within 2 hours of waking up. Sometimes it's shorter, sometimes longer. Just depends on how he is doing. The other big thing is that the sleep needs to be motionless sleep in a quiet place. So he needs to be in a crib or pack and play and not a bouncy chair, car seat in a moving car, swing, etc. The theory being that your most restorative sleep is when you are motionless. So that is what we have been doing. Now, when they are 6 weeks old, you can put your kid to sleep drowsy but awake to teach them to soothe themselves to sleep so that, eventually, they don't need help sleeping. Right now, at 3 weeks, I still need to help soothe Luke to sleep and won't let him just cry it out. But the other great thing about this technique is that if you watch your child's drowsy signs then you can potentially put him/her to sleep with minimal soothing and if you hit it at the right time then there will be little to no crying. So you won't even need to "cry it out." Now, please note that I am totally in favor of crying it out and I don't think it will do any permanent harm to your child. We letter Sarah cry and she is still her mommy and daddy's girl and has no memory of those times at all. With Sarah, we couldn't do the real "extinction" and had to do "graduated extinction" because we learned that she would just keep crying and needed a bit of reassurance. So we "Ferberized" her and it was great. In a week she was sleeping through the night and we were all happier. Since I have more confidence in my abilities to sleep train this time around, I'm starting Luke a bit earlier (plus, Sarah was colicky and needed to be switched to soy formula so that took a month to figure out and I didn't even think to start sleep training until she was 6 or 7 weeks old already). My hope is that I can get Luke used to soothing himself to sleep during nap times (and if a small amount of crying is necessary after 6 weeks, he can do that when it's just him and me and we don't interrupt Sarah's night sleep as much). Shockingly, I am already seeing some good results this week and today he went down for 2 naps with no intervention from me whatsoever! I put him in his crib drowsy but awake and he passed out on his own with little to no fussing and definitely no crying. So I'm hopeful that this is a good start and we can progress from here. I'm also trying to not have Luke attached to a pacifier the way Sarah was... although I'm not as concerned if that happens. You can always take a pacifier away with a couple nights of protest crying. But I won't let him become attached to sucking his thumb, which is his default soothing mechanism right now. So we shall see.
And on that note, of course my thought that things were going great just backfired because he is now awake and crying even though he just ate a couple hours ago. Argh. The joys of parenting a newborn... you never know what you're getting from one day to the next. So downstairs I run to see what the scoop is.
Until next time...
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