My sleep training story
I want to share with you today my sleep training story.
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I was that mom who never wanted to make my baby cry. He’s my first baby and he’s so perfect and so beautiful and there is absolutely nothing about him that I’m not in love with, how could I do that to him? How could I leave him on his own while he was crying and not attend to his needs? I was determined, no matter what, no matter how little sleep I got, no matter how much I had to do it alone, no matter how tired I was (I was working full time then), I wasn’t going to let him cry it out on his own. And then it happened. It had been two weeks and I had been sitting up at night holding him, sometimes occasionally dozing off in the chair. I was averaging 2 hours a night in total. And this went on for two weeks! It was getting to the point where I was worried about my driving ability, let alone my working ability, or my taking care of my baby ability. I was struggling to stay awake at work, and lacking motivation, and everything else. My muscles ached from pure exhaustion.
I was driving to drop my baby off before work and I was worried that it wasn’t safe for me to be driving because I was so tired. That’s what it had come to. My husband was out of town and it was the middle of the week. Everything I had read about cry it out sleep training said that it was going to be hard. It said to start on a weekend where you don’t have to work and to make sure you have support. I had neither, but I knew that I couldn’t make it another day the way things were going. I decided that I needed to do something about it. That night I got Pancake ready for bed and nursed him to sleep. He slept for about an hour before he woke up the first time like he normally did, and I started our sleep training journey. I didn’t put him to sleep drowsy but awake as the sleep experts suggest. I still nursed him and cuddled him until he fell asleep and then I would transfer him to his bed. When he woke up, I would let him cry on his own for five minutes. He usually didn’t stop after just five minutes, not at first anyway. After the first five minutes were up, I would go in and try to convince him to lay down and I would pat his back for five minutes. I would watch the clock in the room until it had been the full five minutes. Then I would leave. It was hard to do anything else because I felt so bad that he was crying on his own. I knew he didn’t understand what was happening and that he was probably as tired as I was. I would wait for six minutes the next time and go in to comfort him for four minutes. Then I would wait for seven minutes and comfort him for three minutes and so on until I was waiting for nine minutes and comforting him for one minute. The first night it took an hour and a half for him to go back to sleep! An hour and a half! That is a long time! He woke up several more times that night and I would repeat the process of waiting and comforting him. The next night he woke up after the first hour, like normal and went back to sleep after 45 minutes. The time it took him to get back to sleep decreased by about half each night. I couldn’t believe it. It was actually working! Was it hard? You bet it was. It was one of the hardest things I’d had to do as a parent up until that point. I would say it was even harder than when he had to get shots for the first time because I was so tired, and he cried so much longer. Eventually, I got to the point where he would fall back asleep in the five minutes I was waiting at the beginning. It was amazing. When my husband came home from his trip the sleep training was basically done. He was impressed, but honestly had no idea how hard it had been and what I had been through. Did my baby stop loving me because I had sleep trained him and let him cry? No, of course not. I was still his mom and we had a lot of great bonding time together. We still enjoyed those moments like nothing was different. Now he sleeps through the night, usually for about 12 hours at a time. He wakes up well-rested and much happier. I am also much more well-rested and much happier. When it is time for bed, I will still nurse him, but he doesn’t fall asleep in my arms anymore. He knows the routine and he is ready for it though. I lay him down in his bed and give him his binky and his blankie. He just looks at me while I tell him how much I love him and what a good boy he is and that I will see him in the morning.
That’s it! No crying, no tears, no painful emotions. He knows he’s tired and he wants to sleep. He knows that I am not far away if he needs me and he just goes to sleep. This also works well for naps. When it’s nap time, he just lays down and goes to sleep. It’s a total turnaround from a baby who just couldn’t sleep to one who sleeps great all the time. Sleep training was a really hard decision to make, but I believe that it was totally worth it!
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