Getting Tommy to Sleep

{Ok, I promise I wont only post about my child's sleep issues all the time. I actually have quite a few post ideas just waiting around for me to type them up. But before we get to those...}

Well, third time's the charm! We went ahead and started the crying thing again. For the third time. It took a couple more horrible, awful, sleepless nights for us to really have the gumption to do it. 

But it was still hard.

The first night, Tommy cried for an hour and a half. 
[To clarify: I was going in every 15-20 minutes to check on/calm him. I can't do the one were you just completely ignore them the whole time, though I ain't judgin' if you have! Every mom has to do what works for herself and her family.]

I only cried a little bit.

The second night I prepared myself for another long wait for him to fall asleep. I had a book to read and my little chart to write down what time I went in to check on him.
But I only had to go in twice before he zonked. That's right, he only cried for 30 minutes. Talk about a major improvement from the night before! What a relief.

Night number 3 took 20 minutes.

Night 4?
No minutes.
No crying. At all.
He just played with his taggie blanket and fell asleep, all by himself.

Can I get a Halle-freaking-lujah? 

Now he goes down and either doesn't cry at all, or only cries for 5-20 minutes. 20 may still sound like a lot, but it's really not.

But our problem wasn't just putting him down- it was that he kept waking up.
We had to let him cry a few times when he woke up at 10 or 11pm, but surprisingly, even after just a couple days, he only cried for about 10 minutes before falling back to sleep.
And while he does still do this occasionally, it's pretty rare now.

As hard as it is to listen to your little baby cry for a long time, the freedom of being able to put him down at night and know that he'll go to sleep on his own is so nice. Now we're working on his naps, which are sometimes easy, and sometimes hard, and still usually too short. But I'll let you know how it goes.

Here's What Happened

So, we started the sleep training thing one night, and it was pretty awful.

Tommy cried for an hour and a half before he fell asleep. 

[Yes, I did go in intermittently and check on him- 15 minutes has never gone so slowly!]

Remember, we don't want this: I'm awake! His eyes look so tired! :(

Overall the 1st night went just the way the book said, though. When I woke him to feed him (instead of letting him wake up on his own), he went right back down and slept till 6:30, with only one teeny peep around 3, for which I did go in and give him his pacifier (the book says not to- whatever). I was thinking, Hey! This might actually work!

But then we decided to put it on hold for another week. Here's why:

The 2nd night, he went down without crying at all! (Maybe I put him down too drowsy?) So when he woke in the middle of the night, way earlier than normal, not in teething pain and not hungry, (why are you doing this?? More below.) I didn't want to make him cry after he hadn't had to just prior. I was afraid he'd be confused and sad and angry. :( So I guess I chickened out.

But there are a few other reasons that kind of throw a wrench into the mix. He's got teeth that are super close to breaking through (or so I've been thinking for 2 weeks!) and I don't want him "crying it out" when he's in pain. Pain needs to be attended to!

Then, he's almost crawling. Supposedly, when a baby is close to hitting a new milestone, they have a harder time sleeping because they are "excited" to keep practicing it. This actually seems to be pretty true of Tommy, who rolls onto his belly and pushes himself up multiple times each night. And then gets frustrated because his habit is to push up, making it so he just wont/can't/doesn't sleep on his belly because he doesn't relax. Sigh.

I love to crawl around my crib!

And finally, my dad is going to stay here tonight, and will be sharing Tommy's room. Pretty sure having an extra person (who tends to snore like a freight train- love ya Dad!) in his room will distract Tommy and any hard work we would have already accomplished would just go down the drain.

I know that I'll be able to find reasons like this all the time. Babies are pretty much constantly teething and learning new milestones, and there's always going to be some random something that comes up to mess with things. So we decided to just wait till after my dad left, and then we'll start again, teeth and crawling regardless (unless when he cries I can tell it's from pain- and I wont be completely ignoring him anyway).

And it's SO TIME for this, because the last couple nights, he's been going down easily but waking up about 2-3 hours later, and not going back to sleep for at least two hours!!

He doesn't want food, he doesn't act like he's in pain- he's just wide awake. I think somehow he's convinced himself that bedtime (we've done the same routine since he was like 6 weeks old) is now another naptime. Sleep a little, then be awake again for a while! Then bedtime, around 12 or 1am. Which means he's usually waking up right after I fall asleep.

Ahh! How do I fix this!? 
Hopefully the sleep training thing will help, but what if it doesn't?
What if he cries the whole two hours?
I will literally lose my mind.

I'm trying to be optimistic, but sometimes it's hard. It really has been helpful to hear about others who have had trouble with this too, though; it's always good to know we're not alone.

Come on, Tommy, let's do this thing!

Operation: Get My Sanity Back

Tomorrow we start "the sleep easy solution!" with hopes of getting Tommy out of this I-can't-sleep-without-Mom-or-Dad funk. I'm sorry, but I can't sit in that dang chair every day for much longer. My iPhone keeps me entertained, but there's only so much Solitaire/Words with Friends/Bejeweled Blitz a woman can take.

Their website

This book was sent to me by my mother-in-law with hopes that it would be a miracle cure for our problems. Here's what we are hoping to change:

1. Requiring a lap to fall asleep in (or, a nap in which to fall asleep, for those of you who prefer correct grammar)
2. Wont let you put him in his crib awake (hence the lap)
3. Crappy naps. Average nap lasts about 40 minutes or less (lately he's been waking minutes after I put him down, and refusing to go back to sleep- I don't know what to do!)
4. Average total daily nap-time of 2 hours (should get 3-4)
5. "Night noshing" (he only takes one bottle, but the goal here is to sleep through the whole night)
6. Night sleep that lasts no more than 9 hours
7. Early waking (we want him to sleep past 5:40!)

I've kind of been against sleep books. I don't really know why. Maybe because I know I'm an uber-perfectionist who will freak out if something doesn't go exactly the way the book says it should. Which we all know it probably wont.

[Remember the lady with magic photographic-hearing-memory who "knows what babies are saying" based on the sounds they make? Made the first couple months of Tommy's life super stressful for me. "That lady said this means he's hungry! Why wont he eat!? HE'S HUNGRY BUT HE WONT EAT! Gaaaahhhh..." Not everything is true for everyone, friends. Even if Oprah says it is.]

ANYway, this book claims to have a solution for all of these issues. I'm nervous to try it because it says bedtime fixes usually only take about 4 or 5 days, but nap fixes take longer, and those are my biggest problem. They also happen to occur while Nate's at school, so he wont be able to help keep me sane. We'll see what happens. 

Their method, in a nutshell:

1. Do your normal bedtime routine, but don't let Baby fall asleep during
2. Put Baby down still awake
3. Say goodnight and walk away
4. After Baby starts to cry* wait 5 minutes, then go check on him, shush him (for no more than 30 seconds, no physical contact)
5. Repeat Step 3
6. Wait 10 minutes, repeat check, walk away
7. Wait 15 minutes, check, leave
8. Continue to check on Baby at 15-minute intervals until he stops crying and falls asleep.

Supposedly the time it takes for him to fall asleep should shorten each night and by about day 4 or 5, he should put himself to sleep soon after you put him in the crib. We'll see what happens! And you do the same thing for naps, though it usually takes a week or longer to change (which is going to suck- letting my baby cry without someone home to comfort/calm me? For days in a row? Yikes.)

*I'm afraid Tommy wont start to cry. For a long time. Because that's what he's done other times that I've gotten fed up and walked away. He plays/talks/rolls around/tries to crawl in his crib for a lonnnng time, but doesn't go to sleep. So what's the problem, you ask? "If he's not fussing, who cares?" I care! Because he's tired! He's super sleep deprived and grouchy all day long! The child can't put himself to sleep even when he's exhausted, and somehow we have to fix that.

This is a not-quite-crying-it-out method, and I hope it works. Because I am at my wit's end.

I'm sure there are people reading this going, "what a crappy idea!" Well, if you have a miracle method, please, do tell. If this one doesn't work, I will be willing to try just about anything. And of course, I will keep you all updated.

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