For Crying Out Loud--The Second Installment

(Find the first installment here.)

Under the loose guidance of Dr. Weissbluth, we spent most of month 4 sleep training. Remarkably, it has gone well, although the nights are still unpredictable, from a feeding standpoint. (It's probably time to encourage the little bug to cut out the 2am feeding.) "Sleep training," as we do it, is just a fancy way of saying we basically let the baby cry herself to sleep, although this time I've used a technique closer to Dr. Ferber's, which incorporates checking and consoling the baby without taking her out of the crib.

What we have learned from our last baby: It's not necessary to listen to the crying on the monitor. The baby is fine. The baby is not hungry. The baby does not need to be "re-paci'ed"--in fact, it interrupts sleep instead of encouraging it.

The rest of this post is going to be VERY boring, but I'm publishing it for documentation purposes. You wouldn't believe how many people like to discuss sleep training experiences! Read at your own risk.

Night One (1/2/12):

-To bed at 7:40, asleep
- Woke moments later. Cried 11 minutes
- Self-soothed for 20 minutes.
- Cried for 25 minutes. Fell asleep. Woke at 3 and 5:30.

Night Two:

- To bed at 7:45. Cried 3 minutes.
- Awake 10 minutes. Cried 3 minutes. Fell asleep.

Night Three:

- To bed at 6:30. No crying. Woke at 1 and 5.
- day time naps start shrinking to 30-45 minutes.

Night 4:

- To bed at 7pm. Cried 30 minutes. Woke at 3:30 and 7:15

Night 5, 6:

-bed at 7pm. No crying. Woke at 3:30 and 5
- day time naps return. Short morning nap (30-60) and longer afternoon nap. Usually a cat nap around noon.

Night 7:
- bed at 7:30. No crying. Slept until 6:15!!! And again until 7:30.
- napped 60 minutes in morning, 30 at grocery store around noon, 2.5 hrs at 2pm

Night 8:
-bed (with daddy) at 7:00. Lots of crying. Went in 30 minutes later and rocked to sleep.

Subsequent nights: Mostly asleep to almost asleep with very minimal crying. In general, still waking between 2-3 and 5-6. Day time naps exist but are still VERY unpredictable (as of 1/23). Often a long (2+ hours) morning nap translates to a short (30-60 minute) afternoon nap. The third nap rarely happens unless she will go down around 4pm. Otherwise, it's too late to nap. Bedtime is generally between 6:30-7:00pm.

Naturally, tonight (1/23), she went down at 6 and woke up at 10:30, completely unconsolable. Headed in to feed her. Sigh.
This happened again on 1/25 and I'm chalking it up to some serious teething pain, for which there seems to be no solution. Poor baby.