This past week has been looooong! The results of our sleep training though - sooooo worth it!
Spoiler alert: Gretchen fell asleep by herself last night in 5 minutes! Here is a recap...
Let me give you a short rundown of where we were at the beginning of last week (you can also read about it
here): the plan was to sleep train cold turkey - naps and bedtime. Well the first full day was so horrifically awful and filled with many many tears from both from Gretchen and me that I decided something needed to change. Here is how the week went (just for bed time):
Monday 9/29/2014: 66 minutes of crying. By this point we realized that it just made her more angry to go check on her so we put her to bed and didn't look back. I also gave Dave the monitor and took the longest shower I have in years. I also blow dried my hair - all this to drown out the crying.
Tuesday 9/30/2014: 30 seconds, but because she was more tired than any baby I have ever seen. This was the day we realized we would have to do something different for naps because she cried for just over 5 hours total and slept for less than an hour the entire day. #parentingfail I was reading online and found that nighttime and daytime sleep are completely different and babies can differentiate. We decided we would just get her to sleep in her crib during the day and sleep train at night.
Wednesday 10/1/2014: I count this as the first "real" day of sleep training because she actually took naps and was well rested for bedtime. Total crying time = 38 minutes
Thursday 10/2/2014: 15 minutes of crying, 15 minutes of tossing and turning. Total time to get to sleep, 30 minutes.
Friday 10/3/2014: 35 minutes of crying.
Saturday 10/4/2014: 33 minutes of crying...slowly getting better.
Sunday 10/5/2014: This was a breakthrough day...she played and babbled for 10 minutes, whimpered for 15 minutes, tried to get cozy for 5 minutes and then, BAM! asleep. Total time, 30 minutes.
Monday 10/6/2014: Cried hard for 25 minutes. At this point most people say their babies are sleep trained, but Gretchen was slowly getting better and I committed to a full 7 days so I kept going even though it still taking nearly half and hour every night.
Tuesday 10/7/2014: Cried 5 minutes! Had I gone deaf or was she really asleep? I had to check the monitor extra close to make sure she was still breathing!
It was a hard week with lots of crying, but in the long run, all of that crying is probably less than what she would have done without sleep training. We are all so much happier and Gretchen sleeps better at night! Since sleep training, she sleeps for 12 hours now with 1 nighttime feeding between 3am-4am (she even skipped that feeding twice in the past week). In the morning, she is as happy a bird with a french fry and smiles and talks to her herself until we come get her up.
I could not have made it through the week without the support of my wonderful husband and fellow mommy friend, Krysta, who gave me advice and encouraged me throughout the week. I am so glad we followed through and would recommend sleep training to anyone who wants a well rested family! My best advice would be to start just with bed time and once that is established, move to naps. Also, commit to a full 7 days because not all babies will show results he first night.
Now that we are officially sleep trained, I have started with naps again and it has been going a million times better than last week. I think it is because she now knows that her crib is for sleeping and I will come and get her when it is time to get up. Here is how today has gone so far:
1st nap: Played for 15 minutes, cried for 10 minutes, tossed for 10 minutes and was asleep!
2nd nap: Cried pretty hard for 34 minutes. And that is where we are at now...she is peacefully asleep and I am thinking about all of the things I will now be able to get done since I wont have to spend hours everyday bouncing her!
Have a Fangtastic day!
was the best investment we made. I love watching Gretchen sleep! Not only is she adorable, but some of her sleep positions are just plain hilarious! Dave and I like to give names to her more common ones. Here is to you Baby G, for entertaining us even when you are asleep.
