Musical Beds and Sleep Training

I'm not against letting babies cry it out when it's necessary, but I save it as a last resort. I didn't let Beckett cry until he was 10 months old, and it was more like a few minutes of fussing and he fell asleep. He just didn't really need to be "trained" because he slept great 95% of the time. I've always known that we would need to do it with Nolan because he just struggles a bit in the sleeping department, but I wanted to hold off as long as I could. Right around the time I went back to work, the 4 month sleep regression hit hard. After a few tiring nights of holding him for several hours while he slept, and I lightly slept half propped up on the couch, I gave up. I threw away all of our hard work to break away from the swaddle and rock n play, and one night at 4:00 AM I got the rock n play out of our storage closet, swaddled him up like a burrito, and finally got some rest. The swaddling didn't really help the next few nights though, and I knew it was time for some sleep training.

I decided to do it over a weekend when I didn't have to be at work, and could take a nap or two since Mark would be home. I read about a few different cry it out methods and decided to go with Ferber. The first night took 1 hour and 2 bowls of ice cream, but then he slept better all night than he had in weeks. He woke up twice to eat, but then went right back to sleep unswaddled and in his crib like a champ. Tonight was night two and he only cried for 20 minutes before falling asleep. Because he is falling asleep without his binky, we decided we'll probably stop giving it to him at all soon. He never wants it when he's awake, and really only uses it for naps and in the car. I planned to let him keep it for a year, but we might as well do it now if he can't have it at night anyway. Poor kiddo, he's getting some tough love this week.  

This is a bit challenging because our boy's rooms are upstairs and ours is downstairs. Nolan has been in our room, but Beckett often comes down sometime during the night to sleep on our floor. I wake up the instant Nolan makes a peep because I don't want him disturbing Mark or Beckett. We decided to play musical beds for this sleep training weekend. Beckett and Nolan go to bed in their own rooms, but then when I'm ready to go to bed I carry Beckett downstairs to sleep on our floor. I sleep in his bed, and then sometime during the night he usually sneaks his way into our bed with Mark. I sleep 100 times better knowing that I'm near Nolan, but not in the same room, and that it's ok if he makes some noise because he won't wake Beckett up. We may continue to play musical beds until Nolan sleeps through the night.... which could be years! 





1 comments:

Bailee said...

I love the picture of them playing trains together! So darling.