I'm happy to report that Katelyn will now fall asleep on her own with minimal crying. All it took was a week of very structured sleep training. First we started with the music. A girlfriend of mine suggested playing the same soothing instrumental music everytime she goes down to sleep. So, out came the Tender Lullabies CD. The transformation was shocking. I still rocked her for a few minutes, then put her down awake. I never heard a peep from her. Was this the same child that had screamed for an hour last week? I couldn't believe how immediately this worked. I just left the CD on for the entire hour it played. I'm not yet ready to mess with going back into her room to turn it off.
Right after fixing the going-to-sleep-on-her-own problem, I decided to tackle the waking-up-every-few-hours problem. I don't think I would have been as eager to correct this behavior if it hadn't occurred two nights in a row where I had gone to bed after midnight. But when you only get 5 hours sleep, you're ready to let your kid handle those nighttime wakings on her own. So I turned the monitor off. Now before you freak out, know that I can hear Kate cry through the walls. I knew I would hear her when she was really truly hungry and ready to eat. But I just couldn't lie there listening to her babble knowing that if I just went in and gave her back the pacifier she would be quiet. I've slept better ever since. And you know what? She is going longer in the night without eating. Maybe she sleeps in later because she is staying awake longer in the middle of the night, but she immediately changed from eating at 5am to wanting to eat between 6 and 7am. And she isn't crying if she's waking up in the night because I would definitely hear her. So it appears we've fixed this problem, too.
All done? Not quite. We still have the swaddling issue. If she's going to put herself back to sleep in the night, she needs to be able to do it with her arms flailing about. So, the day after the monitor went off, the arm came out of the swaddle. Now, she does cry when I put her down awake (still with the music), but her crying has dramatically lessened from 45 minutes to about 3 minutes in 3 days. Last night and this morning when I put her down, she didn't cry at all. And this morning she had both arms out of the swaddle.
Just call me The Sleep Master.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Yahooooo! Congrats! I know it's been a long week. I'm glad to hear it's going well. You're doing the right thing, and you'll be better rested soon!
I bow to the Sleep Master! Aaron is going to sleep on his own and not waking up anymore during the night, and I really like to delude myself into thinking that I actually played an active role in this, but, yeah, not so much. Aaron started going to sleep on his own because HE didn't want to be rocked anymore. And the sleeping all through the night part? Totally all him too. If he does happen to wake up, I still go in there and give him his pacifier back, squeeze him then lay him back down. Whatever works, I guess!
Post a Comment