I'd like to preface this post by saying that not everyone will agree with the sleep training approach we took with our daughter but it was the best decision for us. Each family has different needs so what might work for one family might not work for another. K, onto the post.
Like the term "Witching Hour", I had never heard of "sleep regression" before having a child. Now I cringe when I hear it. Screw you sleep regression. When my daughter turned 14 weeks she started to become difficult to put down for naps, and by difficult I mean she would hardy f'n nap at all. After hours and hours of research and discussing this with friends and family, I attribute my daughters sleep regression to the following;
1) A growth spurt
2) A huge cognitive leap
3) Maturing sleep cycles
I literally tried everything to get our daughter to nap - new sleep routines, blacking out her room, noise machine, quiet decompression time before sleeping, soft lighting, unswaddling, not nursing before sleeping, rocking, soother - NOTHING WAS WORKING! Eventually the nap strike turned into a nap-and-going-to-bed-at-night strike. We were having to tap her bum and basically pin her down for 15-30 minutes every night, and often she'd wake after her 30 minute sleep cycle so we'd have to do it all over again. Some nights it took us 2.5 hours to get her to sleep for the night. The silver-ling was that she slept so well once she was asleep for the night. Sleeping 9-12 hours straight wasn't abnormal. After 8 weeks of peanut hardly napping and 4 weeks of taking 1+ hours to fall asleep at night my husband and I decided something had to change. I'm going to be the first to admit that before peanut was born I thought I'd be sleep training the shit out of her as soon as it were socially acceptable, that was until I realized that sleep training wasn't socially acceptable. Crap. People get heated about it. Like, really heated. After weeks and weeks of research, 5 months of getting to know my babe, and a few days of not being able to get peanut to sleep until after 3:00am we decided that sleep training needed to happen for the good of everyone. Our mission was to teach her how to fall asleep on her own once we had met all of her needs (diaper change, cuddles, a feed and quiet decompression time). As mentioned before, she isn't a baby that wakes a lot in the night so the odd time that she wakes and can't get herself back to sleep I happily feed her since I figure she needs a little snack because she's only 5 months old.
I should also mention that we are teaching our daughter how to sleep without her swaddle on so the sleep training is taking a bit longer then it typically should. We tried a few different approaches and the one that we found best for us is the Ferber technique. If you are going to try out this approach be sure read the book "Solve your child's sleep problems" by Richard Ferber so you fully understand the approach. I also found it extremely helpful to have an honest conversation with friends who had gone through the process before. You have to make sure it's the right fit for you. We have completed 5 nights of the training and have seen vast improvements. We tweaked the approach a bit to better suit our peanuts needs and are staying super consistent, even when I want to give up.
In a nutshell, this is what we are doing; Once we complete our nightly/nap routine we place peanut in her crib after giving her a hug and a kiss and we say "Peanut we love you and are here for you. It is time to go to sleep." I give her little belly a rub and I slowly exit her room and close the door behind me, leaving her white noise machine and night light on. I immediately started my cellphone timer for 5 minutes. Using the video monitor we watch and listen to what is going on with peanut. If after 5 minutes she was still upset then one of us enters her room slowly, go over and rub her belly and say the same thing; "Peanut, we love you and are here for you. It's time to go to sleep", and stay only a maximum of 1 minute and slowly exit. We'd wait 10 minutes the next time and do the same thing. Then 15 minute intervals for the remainder of the night. If she is only whining or laying quietly we do not enter her room. Now at day 5 we had spread out the "room visits" a bit more - we enter at 10 minutes the first time, then 15 minutes for the remainder of the evening until she falls asleep. Tonight she only required one room visit but it did take her over an hour to get herself into her deep sleep (she was in an out of light sleep and was whining a bit here and there). We will see what the next few nights bring.
I'm the first to admit that this isn't easy. Sleep training isn't for the weak, that's for sure. I've cried more than my daughter but I need to keep reminding myself that most babies cannot figure out sleeping skills on their own. Peanut needs us to teach her these skills. These skills are needed for her to develop positive sleep habits. Here are a few things that have helped us get through this last week;
Consistency
Research, research, research
Tweaked the approach to suit our family
Tracked progress
Talk to friends & family for advice/support
Show peanut a tons of love
You.got.this.
No comments:
Post a Comment