Monday morning…I’m sitting here sipping on a delicious cup of homemade latte, looking out the window at our new “view”. The weather has finally taken a turn for the best, the sun is out, the trees are green, flowers are blooming, birds are chirping, and even though it’s warming up, the morning air is still fresh and crisp. Finally some time to write, sort of, background music: Chiara wailing. Here we are sleep training round 2.. or 3? I’m not sure anymore. All I know is this morning would be perfect if my background music was little mermaid and next to me there were a giggling baby, but motherhood isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. It’s hard and sleep training this time is harder than ever before.
Since I can’t tell you how this time around will go and I don’t want to promise “live” updates I thought this was a good time to tell you why we decided to do this and how it went last time. Maybe if I get around to it I’ll also tell you why this is round 2…or 3? I know it’s not the happiest of topics so I’ll keep it short and sweet.
A few months ago, things at our household got pretty dark. Bed time had become a 1-2 hour ordeal where I had to sway, rock, bounce a crying baby who would push me away. Chiara was really fighting the sleep thing, she’d often end up in our bed and unlike some babies who snooze off and cuddle in their mothers arms, she’s just as active in her sleep as during the day meaning no one gets sleep because she’s tossing, turning, kicking and sitting up. Yup, I think I dare say she’s “my bad sleeper” – apparently everyone gets one (or two or more).
To be fair, we weren’t making it easy for her either. Soon after she was born (3 months or so) we started travelling. Cleveland, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Paraguay. Each place meeting new people and with it’s own “life style”, routine. Poor girl had no consistency. Granted she never really fell into a routine herself, but being the spontaneous people we are, we didn’t try to develop one either. So sleep training round one consisted of the following:
- Present and establish a consistent bedtime: 7pm
- Introduce and maintain bedtime routine: dinner (solids) – calm baby led play – bottle – bath – finish bottle if not done – read – into crib to sleep (w/ white noise)
- Training method: sleep wave – check in every 5 minutes to let her know we’re around, it’s bedtime and we love her. The original plan says no touching or soothing, but I believe she needs a bit of our touch, she’s a very independent girl through out the day, sleep is when she gets her cuddles and so during the checks we are ok with handing pacifier, shushing and patting on the back
How’d it go? I was pleasantly surprised! The first night she cried for a total of 11min. Through out the night she whined here and there but as soon as I gave her paci she rolled over and went back to sleep. The second night, she cried a total of 4min and the third she went to sleep without crying. The following nights on and off there was crying depending on how tired she was before bed it was never longer than 15min.
I was proud of her and myself. Clearly she was ready for it, she was ready for me to stop intervening and trying to over soothe, my little baby girl for the first time ever “needed some space”.
Was it hard? At the time no, I was so exhausted and tired of crying myself out of desperation, that my anger fueled my energy to ignore the cries. I should probably clarify I was more angry at myself for having been delusional in thinking adding a little one to our family would mean, we’d be watching our shows and eating dinner with her quietly sleeping in her bed. When I brought her home, I had NO IDEA babies didn’t know how to just close their eyes when they were tired. It was a shock. So the anger wasn’t at her, the anger was at me. Because if wanting to be “chill and wing things” I wasn’t prepared and in doing so I made not only mine, but also her little precious life, so much harder.
And now that silence interrupts my thought process :) I can clearly remember, that this is round 3. What? You didn’t know that sleep training wasn’t a one time thing? How’d we get to round 3? What happened the second time? I know you’re probably sitting at the edge of your seat… our life is a thriller! Unfortunately you’ll have to wait until next time, because now, I’m off to enjoy the quiet and prepare some fun activities for when my little bundle of energy wakes up!
In the beginning, we thought she'd be a good sleeper. It was so hard to wake her up, even to eat!
For a while she would sleep anywhere and in very strange positions! (it'd take some time but she would)
But then... I started a slippery slope... naps with mom (bc mom was just too tired...naps were 30 min and night feeds were still somewhere between 3-4 times a night)
...story in pictures TO BE CONTINUED...