Shawn and I decided that it is time to start sleep training little Mr. Jackson. Ever since we got back from our trip to CT, he has been waking up crying at least 4 times each night, and is not very easy for him to get back to sleep. This has been really tiring and both of us. So we bought Richard Ferber's book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems and decided to use his progressive-waiting approach. We've been reading and researching and felt like this was the best approach for us with Jackson.
Well, last night was the big night! We waited until a Friday to start so Shawn wouldn't need to get up early for work the next day and prepared ourselves for the worst night of sleep ever. Dr. Ferber suggests waiting to put your baby down until when he usually falls asleep, not necessarily when you usually put him to bed, so we kept Jackson up a little later than usual and put him in his crib just before 9:30 pm after our usual bedtime routine. And the crying began! We put on some episodes of Leverage, grabbed our timer, and turned on the baby monitor. Shawn was the strong one of the two of us and went in to check on and reassure Jackson each time (I went in the last time before he fell asleep and it was WAY harder than I thought it would be to watch him scream). Around 10:30 pm the crying started to get a little bit softer, and by 10:45 pm Jackson was quiet and asleep! All on his own without his pacifier or being rocked to sleep!
We laid down as soon as he was quiet, figuring we would be up again in a couple of hours to do it all over again. But no, Jackson didn't wake up until 6:15am!!! Way better than we had planned! He skipped his night feeding with Shawn entirely and pushed his early morning feeding with me until later in the morning! It was wonderful! Hopefully night two will go even better!
Good job mom & dad! I bet he'll be a pro already tonight! I remember having to do this with Lucas, we did CIO because he was waking every hour and a half at 4 months and that was less often than the months before! The first night he cried like Jackson but the next night it was just 20 minutes and the third night he went right to sleep! Of course, you'll still have nights here and there, that he just wants to cuddle but you should be on the right track to better sleep! Congrats=)
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