During the first couple of months of life, my baby slept great. Well, for a newborn she slept great. She’d sleep a lot during the day, give us decent stretches of sleep at night, and I was on maternity leave so I could stay in my pajamas all day if need be, and catch a quick catnap if warranted. Soon enough, though, once she was sleeping better at night, she stopped napping. I’d maybe get her to take a nap without being held or worn in a sling once a week. If I was lucky. I tried all the get your baby to nap tricks, but nothing worked. Then about a week before I went back to work, my daughter stopped sleeping through the night. For the past month, she’s been getting up, on average, three times a night. Safe to say, I’m completely and utterly exhausted.
I’ve been reading about how to get your baby to sleep for months now, and I knew I was doing everything wrong. Everything! But as a busy working mom, I couldn’t fathom having to sleep train when I had to get up at 5:15 AM for work.
As a teacher, I knew that summer break is quickly approaching. I planned on trying to sleep train the baby then, but over Memorial Day weekend, I ended up with five days in a row off because we didn’t need to utilize snow days this winter. I decided to give it a shot and hope something could stick. My daughter will be 6 months old in a couple weeks, so I also felt it was a good time to work with her on this. A friend recommendedThe Sleepeasy Solution. So I quickly downloaded it on my Kindle and got to speed reading it.
I had to do some sleep training with my oldest when she was 8 months old, but pretty much she was a good sleeper. I don’t think I followed one specific plan with her, but rather I winged in from listening to anecdotal information from friends. I remembered I didn’t like what I did, but it got the job done. There was too much crying. So I was quickly drawn to The Sleepeasy Solution as it’s called the “least cry” method. And I appreciated that the creators of this method, Jennifer Waldburger and Jill Spivack, calls it “sleep learning” instead of “sleep training.” Training sounds hard and difficult and not pleasant. But as a teacher, I can totally get on board with sleep learning. Because really, I need to teach my baby how to sleep.
The first thing I had to do was break some habits. I had to stop letting the baby fall asleep while nursing. That’s what’s been causing her to wake up so much at night and refuse to nap unless being held. So now I do whatever I can to keep her awake while nursing right before sleep time. Whistling has been my go-to or blowing on her face. Or the best yet, is allowing big sister to stay in the room and talk to me.
This of course meant that I had to put my youngest daughter to bed awake. I was petrified. But I went for it last Saturday night. And you know what, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be using The Sleepeasy Solution. My daughter responded very well to it. After three different check-ins, she fell asleep. It only took 30 minutes!
A few things I did to set up her first night of sleep learning was to get rid of the sleep sack she was sleeping in, remove the magical seahorse, which we used as a crutch to soothe her back to sleep, and get rid of the couple of pacifiers we had in the crib because occasionally, she’d take it for a few minutes to soothe. We already had a sleep routine set up, so that remained the same. In addition, the night before I slept with a lovey I purchased for her. That’s the only thing in her crib. And it’s placed to her side so that if she wants it she can have it, but there’s no pressure.
On night two, I only had to do one check after five minutes of whiny crying, and she passed out. Night three she cried for maybe three or four minutes and she fell asleep without any checks. And by the fourth night, she let out one little whimper, rolled to her side where the lovey is placed, and fell asleep. On her own. On the fourth night!
The sleep learning method also says it’s best to work on naps the day after the first night of sleep learning. I didn’t have high hopes. Naps have been the biggest struggle and I’d pretty much given up on them. Waldburger and Spivack even said that it would most likely take longer to get naps regulated than it does to get baby to fall asleep. I tried it out, even though I thought I’d end up listening to her cry for an hour, as that’s the recommended amount of time to keep baby in the crib, with check-ins of course.
Before I could set up getting baby to nap, I had to understand the amount of time she should be awake and to plan naps accordingly. Missing the right window could throw the whole getting her to nap thing off. My oldest daughter did really great with naps and I never really had to know the wake time vs. sleep time, because she just got on a good schedule herself. My youngest daughter, not so much.
The first day of naps, I had to do three check-ins, and then something magical happened—she napped! For two hours. Then for her second nap, I filled my husband in on The Sleepeasy Solution methods and made him promise to not give in to her cries. To just do the check-ins and I promised him that she would nap. And guess what, after three check-ins, she napped again for another two hours. And for four days now, I’ve gotten two naps a day out of her. Some have been longer than others. Some have gone easier than others. But she’s gone from not napping unless she’s in someone’s arms to taking two naps on her own overnight!
I know that it’s not always this easy for sleep training/learning to happen. But my little girl, well she’s responded amazingly well to The Sleepeasy Solution.
I’m not out of the woods yet with sleeping. My daughter is still waking up at night to eat, and that’s to be expected as she reverse cycled once I went back to work where she knows I’m home at night and wants to nurse and spend more time with me. I’ve been recording the times and duration of her nursing for the past four nights, and now I’ve got a good idea of her routine and can begin the process of weaning her from night time feedings. It’s going to be a slow process, especially because I don’t want to cause a tremendous dip in my milk supply. The Sleepeasy Solution has got a game plan for that too.
Ultimately, it’s been a huge game changer for me. No longer am I having to nurse and rock the baby to sleep for an hour only to have her start crying as soon as I put her down. No longer am I having to rock her for one to two hours to get her to take a nap. I’ve got time back. I’m not as exhausted. She’s less fussy too because she’s getting the rest she needs. Hopefully, in the next few weeks, I can successfully wean her from night feedings and really feel what a good night’s sleep feels like!
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