Sleep Training: Day 1

Since we stopped night feedings, Nicolaus has been a great sleeper. Once he goes to bed, he is down for the night sleeping nearly 12 hours. His parents are the issue. We have let him become accustomed to being rocked to sleep each night. I do not think anything is wrong with this practice, and I love every minute of holding my baby in my arms, especially right when he has just fallen asleep and is so content and snuggly. But it must stop. First of all, as I am getting bigger in this pregnancy, it is becoming increasingly harder to hold him on my lap and rock him to sleep for a half hour. Second, when his baby sister comes along, I just will not be able to spend as much one on one time with him, especially thirty minutes to an hour each night putting him to bed. Knowing this and actually implementing sleep training are two very different things. Ironically, March's issue of Parenting magazine includes an article on gentle sleep training with a method proposed by a child and family therapist from Annapolis MD (http://www.sleeplady.com/). So I decided this would be the week. Tonight our nighttime routine started at 6:30 pm after his bath. We read a few stories, said "Night-night, time to turn out the light," darkened the room and sang him one song. On any other night I would continue to sing or hum until he slipped off into dreamland. Tonight I layed him down in his crib. Immediately he stood up and threw his Buddy, blanket and pacifier out of his crib. He messed around in his crib for a while and when he really started rubbing his eyes again, I put everything back in his crib, laid him down and told him it was night-night time. This cycle repeated a few times until finally he collapsed on his blanket and decided to go to sleep--or so I thought. I started to creep out of the room until I realised his eyes were wide open! When he saw me move, he sat up, looked at me for a bit and then laid back down. This repeated several times until I was finally able to slip out unnoticed. When I walked downstairs the clock read 7:45 pm. We'll see what happens tomorrow!