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March 2011 Moms
AW: Sleep training is working wonders!! (Long)
So I screwed myself by always, always nursing Jessica to sleep. For every nap, bedtime, and nighttime feeding. We had no bedtime routine to speak of. No schedule of any sorts. And Jessica had no clue as to what self soothing was. Well I started sleep training last night and it's going great!!
I've created a bedtime routine for starters. Jessica gets cereal, takes a bath, gets put into her sleeper, then we read 2 books on a blanket in her nursery, we talk about daddy for a few minutes, then I give her gas drops, feed her, and put her down to bed. If she starts to fall asleep while nursing I immediately unlatch her and burp her. If she seems hungry again, I will try feeding again, but as soon as she starts to fall asleep, I take her off and burp her again, then no more nursing. I give her a kiss, lay her down, tell her goodnight, and walk out. Last night I waited 5 minutes of her fussing, then screaming, before going in to get her. I did allow myself to pick her up and walk with her and hummed to her, but no nursing. When she calmed down, I layed her down and left the room. Waited 5 minutes, wash, rinse, repeat. Last night it took 25 minutes from the first time I layed her down til she actually fell asleep for the night.
Tonight we did the entire bedtime routine the same as last night. When I layed her down, she wiggled around her crib for about 15 minutes. No crying. No fussing. And she's asleep!!!!!
Also, for the first time last night, she woke up once to eat. I made sure she was half awake before laying her down and she went right back to sleep. She woke up another time. My plan was to let her cry/fuss for 5 minutes before going in there, but she fell asleep on her own after 3. This is the first night ever I have not had to feed her 2 or more times. And it definitely beats the nights where she wakes up 5-6 times.
She also fell asleep on her own for all 3 naps today, though she did put up a bigger fight for those than for bedtime.
The most I ever let her cry/fuss was 5 minutes, then I would go pick her up and walk with her. I was mostly trying to break her of nursing to sleep and figured if she fell asleep while we were walking that would still be a step in the right direction, but it's looking like she doesn't even need that. I am so incredibly excited that this is working so well and so quickly!!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: AW: Sleep training is working wonders!! (Long)
Wow, I'm glad things are going so well for you! Maybe you can help me? What exactly is sleeping training? Is it just getting them into a routine and helping them soothe themselves? Here's what we've been doing:
She gets her bath around 8:00 and then we got into her room and get her bedtime lotion (the soothing kind! LOve the smell) and she gets into her sleeper. Then we go over to her rocker and she gets her last bottle of the night. After that I put her down in her bed, she sometimes moves around a bit, but falls asleep on her own. We have no problems getting her down at night. She was doing really well sleeping rom about 8:30-4:30 or 5:30. This week we haven't changed anything and she's getting up at like 1:30-2 and then again at 5-6. When she does wake up for a bottle, I feed her and put her right back in. She usually falls asleep easily, but some nights she will not go back down. I'm not sure what happened, just when we think we have it down she switches it up lol. She is also acting like she's starving!! She's been eating a lot more, so i'm not sure if she's going thru a growth spurt or not? She also is the happiest baby ever at 4-5 in the morning and wants to talk and play lol. I'm glad she's so happy, but wish it was more like 6 or 7! lol
Anyways, are we kind of doing sleep training? What should we change or try different? Thanks for your advice.
Sleep training to me just means getting her to fall asleep on her own. In the process I have also made a "schedule" for us. She naps at 10, 2, and 6, then goes to bed at 9, and wakes up at 8. Obviously it isn't set in stone just depending on what we have going on that day and whether she is actually tired at those times or not. But I at least wanted to have some sort of schedule to try and plan around. It helps her body know when it should be tired, when bedtime is, and when to wake in the morning. I read the Ferber book before doing any of this and just kind of altered it to what I felt comfortable with.
If your LO is falling asleep on your own then I think you're doing fine. If you need to change when she falls asleep, wakes up, or naps then you can do that type of sleep training, but otherwise it sounds good to me. I would bet she's going through a growth spurt or an early version of the 4 month wakefuls. Jessica went from waking twice a night to waking 5-6 times at night right about the same time as your LO. Give it a week or 2 and if she hasn't gone back to her "normal" then you can reevaluate.
Yay for mama, daddy, and baby!
We've always used a schedule with Landon, so we never really had to change any habits. But it did take him a while to fall asleep on his own with no fussing or intervening.
Now, I just feed him, lay him down wide awake, he'll play or roll or coo, then he's out within 15 minutes. No fussing. And, he wakes up fussy around 5 am to eat, I feed him and lay him back down to sleep because I don't want that to be his morning awake time.
He'll wake back up around 7am and just play or coo until we come get him. No fussing.
It's awesome to be able to take a shower and not have to listen to a baby screaming on the monitor.
Life of mrsjanks
I am guilty of nursing to sleep too but guess I will need to work on that soon. Going through the wakeful period so maybe once that slumps off then we can start trying to let her fall alseep on her own. Like the 5 mintue idea. Thanks for sharing this!
Jessica was born March 5, so that makes her...almost 19 weeks. She weighed 14.88 lbs as of Monday.
When she hit 3 months she was up 5-6 times a night and took 3-4 30 minutes naps during the day. This lasted about a week. Then she went back to waking 2-3 times a night but still only taking 30 minute naps. Then the day she hit 4 months, she woke 5-6 times a night again and still took about three 30 minute naps. That lasted about a week. Then she as back to 2-3 wakings at night and 3-4 30 minute naps during the day. So on Monday I talked about all this to the pedi and she said that it's perfectly normal for a BFed baby to wake 1-2 times a night even up til a year old. But they should not be waking more than that. She also said they need between 2-4 hours of sleep in naps. This could be spread anywhere between 2 and 4 naps a day. The reason I chose to go ahead and start sleep training now was because my pedi and I both believed that she was only waking so much because she wanted to use me as a pacifier, not because she was actually hungry. So my main goal was to get her to fall asleep on her own so that I would know when she woke at night it was because she was hungry and not because she needed help getting back to sleep. After only 1 day of falling asleep without nursing she only woke up once at night. She only woke up once on the second night as well. And for the past two days she has fallen asleep for every nap on her own.
If your LO can fall asleep on his own, or if whatever you are doing to help him is working for both of you right now, then I wouldn't worry too much about him still waking at night. Like I said, my pedi says it's normal to wake 1-2 times at night. And if his habits at night or for naps changes, give it about a week to see if it's just a growth spurt or 4MW or something like that. If it doesn't go away after about a week then it may be a new "habit" he's learned and then you can decide if you want to try to fix that habit or not. I don't think 14 weeks is too young to start, but the book I read says if you try sleep training for 3-4 days and it just isn't working then LO may not be ready. So if you need to, try something for a few days, if it works, great, if it doesn't, give it some more time and then try again later.