Sunday, January 4, 2015

To cry or NOT to cry

That is the question.


This past month has been exciting, yes. It was Lara's first Christmas and Jon and I felt like we were kids again...waking her up, bringing her downstairs to see the gifts Santa brought her. We were just giddy. Giddy AND DELERIOUS. We haven't gotten a full nights sleep since sometime in November.


Yep, frickin' NOVEMBER. 

The craziest part about this, though, is that Lara has slept thru the night since we brought her home from the hospital. 



We got a taste of the good life, a life with sleep....and then boom. 


We woke up


Over the Christmas holiday it got really out of hand. We were up every few hours, on a good night.  We decided it was time to do something drastic.

So I turned to 'ol faithful, my Moms on Call book. My Baby Bible. If you haven't heard of Moms on call, check them out here. One of the many perks of blogging is that I've connected with lots of new mommies.  If we pool together all the advice we've been given & all we are learning everyday, we're all bound to keep our children alive.  Right?  I learned of Moms on Call via a blog connection and I'll tell ya, I probably read it every. single. day.  There's advice in there for just about everything you can think of. 

Baby Shower Lists.
Bathing.
Pooping.
Nail clipping.
Food allergies.

You name it, they cover it.

When I went back to work full time the first of December, I let things slide.  I wasn't reading the book. I didn't care about stupid routines & structure.  ALL I wanted was to be with my baby girl even if that meant keeping her up way beyond her bedtime.  Needless to say, she wasn't sleepin' and we weren't either.


Which leads me to this past week.  On New Years Eve, we put her to sleep around 8:00.  At midnight, the fireworks started.....and then the crying started. 

She fell back asleep but was up again a couple hours later, and then another couple hours later.  The next morning we decided it was time to get serious.  We dusted off the MOC book and start reading.  According to her age, they recommend breaking the middle of the night feedings by letting them "cry it out."  

I will admit, I've always thought that concept was just pure barbaric.

Well, it may be barbaric, but it works. 

But just because it works doesn't mean it isn't hard as hell.  That first night was TOUGH.  My heart broke in half listening to my baby helplessly cry her little heart out.  We pushed thru and twenty minutes later, she was asleep.  The next night, she slept 10 hours straight, and again the following night.



Now, I'm officially a believer.  For us, the technique has worked so far.

So tell me, what sleep training techniques have you tried?

 

 

2 comments :

Meg O. said...

Caroline's sleep schedule has been whack lately (thanks, 4 month sleep regression!) but it's starting to even out. We make sure to put her down at 7 pm because she is a hot mess if we wait any longer. However, most nights she still wakes for a night feeding at 2 am. I am still exclusively breastfeeding her (no solids yet) so I'm not sure if I should let her cry through this waking. Pretty sure we didn't let Kennedy cry through her night wakings and she didn't sleep fully through the night til 9 months old. I think I'm going to be tougher this go around! But still not sure if I should wait until she's on solids. What does MOC say? I just need to go ahead and get it because clearly I'm not a pro even after the second baby.

Erin @ Happily Obsessed said...

We use the cry it out method as well and it works for us!! Your right, it breaks your heart but it WORKS!!! That said, there have been a few times that Mav works himself up so much he can't breath he is crying so hard and I will go get him and snuggle him back to sleep. 9/10 times I turn down the baby monitor and roll over and check back in about 10 minutes and its lights out. Then I have to get up an go cover him back up b/c he has thrown his blanket all around, ha!