Sleep Training: Day 13

Yesterday we progressed to walking out of the nursery after stories and leaving Nicolaus to fall asleep on his own. The first two times he cried for about 15-20 minutes, but today he only cried for a few minutes and then tonight for a few seconds before drifting off. Hallelujah!

Sleep Training: Day 4

Morning Nap


Today I moved my chair beside the nursery door. Evidently this made Nicolaus think it was time to play games. It took 40 minutes for his to finally fall asleep.

Afternoon Nap

What a struggle! He does have a fever this afternoon, but I was ready to give up! 1 hour total

Bedtime

15 minutes total and no emptying of the crib. Thank God!

Sleep Training: Day 3

Afternoon Nap

My monthly MOMs Club meeting met this morning, so in order to preserve his nap, Nicolaus and I ran some errands beforehand. He slept the entire time in the car for about an hour. He was tired a little earlier in the afternoon due to a shortened/different morning nap and activity at the MOMs meeting. He emptied his crib only once and was asleep in 20 minutes.

Bedtime:

No emptying of the crib! Elapsed time from story to slumber: 30 minutes

Sleep Training: Day 2

Morning Nap

After much internal debate, I decided I needed to be consistent with our sleep routine at naptime. So when Nicolaus started looking sleepy, we went into his nursery, I read him a story and put him in his crib and sat in my rocker. He threw out his blanket and Buddy three times, but then snuggled up with his Buddy and fell asleep. From the time we strated his story to when I was walking out of his nursery, 30 minutes passed. Much better than the hour and 15 minutes it took last night!

Afternoon Nap

There were several more antics this afternoon when I put Nicolaus in his crib, and boy was it hard to keep a straight face when he was standing on his head or trying to put his Buddy around himself like a cape. But finally, he decided it was time to lay down and he very swiftly closed his eyes and drifted off. Total time was about 35 minutes.

Bedtime

When it was all said and done, he emptied his crib three times, but when Nicolaus finally fell asleep 45 minutes had elapsed since we started his stories. Thats progress for bedtime!

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!