When Tiago was really little [and I spent hours awake in the middle of the night feeding him and scouring the internet for information] I read the millions of opinions available about how to get your baby to sleep: cry-it-out right out of the gate, wait until they're at least 6 months, do whatever the baby wants because you can't spoil a baby, etc. I was open to any of it, but there's no parenting manual telling you step by step what the right choices are, so I sifted through the information the best I could and tried to make good choices.
From the start, Santiago slept okay. He was okay (not great) with naps, and once he was asleep at night he only woke up to eat. Because we (err, I... it was just me) wasn't having any major problems with the current situation, I never felt the need to try anything drastic. Here are the phases Santiago and I went through, which finally brought me to try some sleep training.
Newborn eat/sleep/cry- I just remember a lot of crying, and a lot of eating [read: feeding]. But that's what newborns do, so I didn't get too concerned about it. There was never a 'schedule' but enough of everything. And, I don't remember anything else, because that's just how motherhood is.
Almost there- When Tiago was two months old, he slept through the night once! I felt like we were getting so close to a good night's sleep. Normally he only woke up once to eat, then went right back to sleep. Because he slept so well at night, I forgave the fact that he'd sometimes cry for 40 minutes before falling asleep at night, and it always fell right when Hyrum was trying to call on Skype. (Bad timing.) Any time I attempted to let him cry-it-out to fall asleep for a nap, he just cried and cried--sometimes up to an hour. I gave that up pretty quick because it didn't get us anywhere.
Time Change- At 3 months we went to Utah for an extended vacation (2 months!). The time zone change and a completely new environment definitely affected his sleeping. He routinely woke up at least twice to eat, but was good at falling asleep at bedtime. And we were out having fun so much there was no semblance of a nap schedule.
Back to Germany- I was tired of listening to crying, so when Tiago began falling asleep after/while eating, I was okay with it. It was easy. And easy was good. It meant more sleeping, but left me holding a sleeping baby, and getting less done. It was unpredictable when he would fall asleep, and at night he was still waking up twice to eat, sometimes 3 times.
So... by 6 months I was ready to do something about it. After one particularly looong night (when he was sick) I requested the book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems from the library. When it came last week I flipped through it and decided to give it a try.
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What's the deal? Ferber basically says to put the baby in the crib awake and let them learn how to fall asleep on their own. Let them cry, checking on them in set intervals, until they fall asleep. For naps, the same is true except if they don't fall asleep within 30 minutes, get them up. The biggest issue for Tiago was getting rid of the sleep association of eating to sleep. Plus, I wanted to cut out his middle-of-the-night eating.
Night 1- He woke up and cried for an hour before falling asleep.
Night 2- He woke up and cried for a little over an hour before falling asleep.
Night 3- He woke up (twice) and cried for 40 minutes (total).
Night 4- I was woken up for the first time by the sun coming in my window at 7:30am! AWESOME.
Almost as great as sleeping for a solid 8 hours is my productivity during the day when Tiago naps. When Tiago was a baby, I would just put him in his crib to take a nap and let him cry until he slept, but it only worked about 50% of the time. I am shocked at how much better it is working now that he's older! In the last 4 days, 9 out of 10 naps have been a success. He sleeps more than 2 hours a day. Sometimes it takes a full 30 minutes of crying, but if its followed by over an hour of good sleep. And a happy baby when he wakes up.
A few notes on this sleeping business:
- I don't think I'd do the "check on the baby until he falls asleep" business if I had a video baby monitor. However, Tiago still rolls on to his stomach and freaks out until I come flip him back over. So periodically while he's crying I check that he's on his back or else he will never fall asleep.
- I've read a few blogs online where people say they [the parent] cried the whole time they were doing sleep training because it was so hard to leave their babies alone to cry themselves to sleep. Seriously? I might be an insensitive mother, but I would much rather listen to a baby cry themselves to sleep for 30 minutes than have to entertain an overly-tired baby. While he's in his crib crying, I'm running around the apartment trying to see how much I can get done before he falls asleep. If he never actually falls asleep, I just had 30 minutes of free time to clean the house and do dishes. And if he does fall asleep, I can settle into something for an uninterrupted hour.
- I don't regret not starting sooner for a few reasons. At least with Tiago, I don't think it would have worked as well before 5 or 6 months. I enjoyed having flexibility to leave the house without interrupting a solid sleeping schedule; with Hyrum being gone that adult interaction kept me sane. And last, cuddling with a sleeping newborn is one of the payoffs of parenthood; I decided after a few weeks that having Santiago sleep all the time in his crib wasn't worth it to me.
- At the recommendation of the book (and pretty much everyone smart) I started to do a bedtime routine with Santiago.... which means he now gets a bath every night instead of once a week (or whenever I was bored and felt like it.) I can see that being more important as he gets older.
I have my fingers crossed that I get another full night of sleep tonight, and that last night wasn't a fluke. Sleep training doesn't work miracles, but it has certainly made things easier.
[Update: Night 5- woke up for 15 minutes. Not bad.]
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