Adventures in Sleep Training

Those who know me really well will agree that I LOVE SLEEP!! I get cranky and can't function properly on little to no sleep. Everyone tells you that once you have a baby you'll never sleep again so I prepared myself for that. Well, when Isabella was first born she slept all the time and it was wonderful! I would sleep whenever she did and found that most days I just ended up staying in bed a good portion of the day. For a new mom who loves to sleep this was the greatest gift in the world; especially because I had prepared myself to not be sleeping. At the time I thought, yes, Isabella takes after her mom and loves to sleep. Well as things tend to do, it changed after about a month. Isabella would sleep about 1 1/2-2 hours at night and about 30-45 minutes here and there through out the day. Eventually this became 2-3 hours at night and about 45- 60 min. here and there through out the day. After 5 months of this I was wearing down! Once Isabella turned 6 months old, we all decided (her doctor included) that it was time to get some sleep again! Before we started Isabella on sleep training we would have to either nurse her to sleep or walk around the apartment with her until she fell asleep (doing this could take awhile). Some times she would be so tired and incontrollable that you couldn't walk around with her or rock her in fear that she would be dropped. Needless to say, putting Isabella to bed was tiring and a struggle. We started having her cry herself to sleep on Tuesday night. Listening to her cry was one of the hardest things for me to do. I wanted to go in there and pick her up so bad but I knew that I couldn't. We had tried previously to put her down and leave and come back a few minutes later to put our hand on her and talk to her. Well, going in her room only made matters worse so we would end up getting her. From that experience we learned that it is best to just keep the door closed unless it sounded like her crying was getting worse. Tuesday night she ended up crying for about 20 minutes then went to sleep. I was relieved that it was only 20 minutes; I have heard that it can take an hour or more sometimes. Wednesday night she cried for awhile but part of that was my fault. She was crying for about 20 minutes but then her cry got more intense so I went into her room incase she was hurt or something. She did scratch her self with her nails on her face but I don't know if that made her cry more or not. So I put her back down and she wasn't very happy about it since I had just picked her up and she thought she won. She cried for about another 20 minutes and then decided to give in and sleep. Thursday night she cried for about 10 minutes. Last night was the best night by far; she's getting used to the fact that she needs to put herself to bed. She cried for 5 minutes then talked to herself and feel asleep. Each night this week she slept for at least 6 hours straight, would eat, and then sleep until about 8:30. This is wonderful! I feel like a new person with all the extra sleep my body has been craving! I now remember what it feels like to get sleep and why I love and missed it so much! Isabella is even getting better at sleeping in her crib during the day and actually taking longer naps. Since Wednesday I've been putting her down for naps in her bed around the same time to get her into a schedule more. She was already starting to put herself on a schedule and would want to nap around the same time everyday but I wanted to really start nailing that down. Well, since then she's been sleeping for about 1 1/2 hours at a time (sometimes 2 hours)! What a great transformation! It has been so nice to start getting her on a schedule and sleeping more at night and durning the day. Sometimes I don't know what to do with my self during the day now that I have a baby who actually sleeps! Now we have one happy, more rested household and it is wonderful! If would have known how beneficial having your baby cry themselves to sleep is, I would have done this a couple months ago!