Baby Jack was a great sleeper for the 1st 10 weeks of his life and then a switch flipped and he became very inconsistent. The past couple he has been up almost every hour or two at night - not necessarily hungry but just wanted to be held. He would fall asleep almost instantly as soon as we picked him up. We started realizing that Jack wasn't able to put himself to sleep so as soon as he woke up, he would wonder where we were. He had quite a few sleepovers with my parents so we could get some sleep.
Last week I decided we needed to do something to help Jack sleep better. One of the daycare teachers in Jack's room asked if I had ever read the book BabyWise. I actually have the book and read it before Madelyn was born but Madelyn was able to put herself to sleep.....without any "help" from us so I had forgotten about the book. I didn't realize what a gift putting yourself to sleep truly was!
We had tried the "no cry" sleep solution but I was so exhausted during that time that I always resorted to just picking up Jack and rocking him to sleep.
I knew BabyWise was for us when I read the page in the book that went something like this......are you the mother that rocks her baby to sleep, gently gets up from the chair and puts him/her in their crib ever so carefully? Then you tip-toe out of the room, holding your breath & crossing your fingers your baby doesn't wake up (knowing they will at some point soon) because you know you have to start all over as soon as you hear them crying? That was totally me!
We started on Saturday June 8th. Madelyn was at my parents for the night so we felt it was as good of a time as any. Part of my reason for not wanting Jack to cry much at night was because I didn't want to wake Madelyn. I prepared myself for Jack to cry.....although you can't fully prepare yourself. The 1st night he cried for 21 agonizing minutes (which felt like 21 hours). I didn't think he would ever stop. Poor baby! We gave ourselves a 30 minute limit and I was convinced he would never figure it out but he did! The 2nd night he only cried for 10 minutes, the 3rd night only 4 minutes and we have been on our way ever since. In fact most nights Jack prefers to be put down so he can go to sleep. I can usually get a couple 4 hour stretches which feels amazing! We are so thankful that this strategy worked well for Jack! We all needed to start sleeping!
I still feed him 1x/night (anywhere between 1-3 am) and he is still up a few times making noise, crying. Many times he can put himself back to sleep but sometimes we just need to give him his paci to comfort him. He has started rolling over and sleeping on his tummy which is fine except for when he wakes up and freaks out. He doesn't quite get that all he has to do is roll over or put his head back down. We'll get there! I'm feeling so much better about everything than I did a couple weeks ago - I wasn't sure when we would ever sleep again! We've made huge progress!
 |
| Fast asleep |
 |
| So peaceful! |
