Mommy Monday: Nightmare Baby Sleeping Habits Turn Dreamy!

When it comes to sleeping, our family has been suffering quite a bit for the past few months. When Gus was three months old, he was already sleeping 6 to 7 hours at a time. We felt SUPER lucky and thought we were on the road to restfulness. Then right around Thanksgiving time, everything changed. We could blame it on hospital visits, traveling back East, being sick, teething, putting Gus in different sleeping situations or just pure bad luck. Whatever the cause – we were all (including Gus) exhausted from being up anywhere between 3 – 7 times a night. Each time he woke up, the only way to get him back to sleep was to pick him up and, more often than not, feed him. It wasn’t fun and our weekends were a series of patchwork naps and sleeping stints in an effort to “catch up.” I started to dread night time and going to bed which, for anyone who knows me, knows that I LOVE a good, long sleep.

Last Friday, Parry and I agreed that this had to stop. Realizing the toll it was taking on us, we could only imagine how it was affecting the Gus man and what bad habits we were cultivating in him. I went to Facebook, my sister Nicole & Super Parents Kerri & Simo for advice. Everyone agreed it was time for sleep training and they all had the same tactic – which turns out is called the Ferber method.

For those of you who don’t know – the Ferber method is about letting your babe “cry it out” while comforting him at time intervals (i.e. after the first 5 minutes of crying – a parent goes in and gently soothes the babe without picking him up or feeding him). The idea is the time intervals gradually increase so the babe doesn’t expect or need the parent in order to fall back asleep. It sounds cruel – as every parent hates to hear their babe cry – but we also knew that we couldn’t continue down the sleep path we were on. At 6 ½ months, Gus is at a crucial learning & retaining phase – we didn’t want to affect his development because he was exhausted.

We decided to start on Saturday and I was terrified. I was afraid Gus would be starving in the night or that he would simply cry throughout the night and then be scarred for life. There was a quote in an article that made me feel much better about the process which basically said that sleep training is one of the first hard things that parents do to help their children be more independent. So, while I was scared, I was also sold. This HAD to happen.

The first part of the training happened on Saturday day which we spent getting Gus back to eating every 3 – 3 ½ hours. It was a bit of a tearful, stressful day – but it worked and before bed time on Saturday night Gus had a hearty meal of cereal & bananas, as well as his nighttime bottle. We gave him a bath and then Parry tucked him in at 6:30 pm. We had agreed that training would start from the moment we put him down. Wouldn’t you know – at 7 pm, Gus started crying. Parry bravely followed the protocol of going up in time intervals (we had decided on 4 minutes, 6 minutes, 10 minutes and 15 minutes) and the first two times, Gus kept wailing. And I kept cringing at the sound of his sobs. But, much to our surprise by 7:17 pm, Gus had fallen back asleep.

We were ready for a trying night and when he started crying again at 9 I wondered if this was something I could actually do. But Gus stopped crying before the first 4 minute interval was over. Whew – lucky! Parry and I hit the sack around 10:30 and even though we both woke up numerous times checking the monitor (to make sure it was on, that he was breathing – all that rational stuff), Gus didn’t wake up again until 3 am. Parry had to go once and by the second interval he was asleep again. I had decided that after 4:30, I would go in and get him figuring he would be starving or just need me. When I woke up at 5 am, I turned on the video monitor and saw something that honestly brought tears to my eyes: Gus was playing in his crib. He wasn’t crying or fussing, he was content and trying to suck on his feety PJs.

We figured night #1 was a fluke and were prepared for night #2 to be much worse. But last night was even better – he went to bed at 6 pm and woke up at 6 am – with only one crying stint at 1 am that lasted for 6 minutes. We are obviously really lucky that it has gone as easily as it has – so far. But I think that half the battle is knowing that we can all get through this. And that we’re not hurting him.

I know that sleep training seems and sounds like a selfish thing – but I cannot explain how proud I am of Gus. It turns out that he isn’t a difficult sleeper but that WE, as his parents, had gotten him into a bad cycle and it was our job to set him up to successfully get out of it. While I imagine this isn’t the end of our challenges with sleep, I do know that it’s the beginning of Gus’ independence and it’s been pretty amazing to watch so far.