Cry it out = wimper a little

I am seriously against cry it out.  I was more upset about doing cry it out than Jude was.  I have fought doing it for 5.5 months now.  Jude’s sleeping is getting worse.  Some night he only wakes up 1-2 times and others 3-4 times and Liz has had it!  So, we (mostly Liz) bit the bullet and we did cry it out yesterday.  We did the check on him on intervals cry it out, not just the slam the door and leave him wailing one (Liz always likes to point out that there is no need to slam the door and I am just being dramatic when I say it that way, but that is how it feels to me).

He is trained to take naps in his swing, but he LOVES to sleep on his stomach, so that was starting to annoy him anyways.  He takes a pacifier for bed, but we also got rid of that.  We usually rock him to sleep, but we are not doing that anymore either.  Oh yeah, hard core sleep training here.

Liz started with his naps and put him down in his crib.  He lightly cried for a total of 5 minutes and slept 3 hours in 3 different naps.  We even had to wake him up from his last one because it was 5pm and he needed to be awake for a while before bed or he might have slept longer.  I guess Jude was just waiting for us grow up and put him in his crib!

Next, bedtime.  No pacifier, no rocking to sleep.  Wake him up if he falls asleep while eating his bottle. Put him down while he is awake.  Okay, deep breaths!  I started his routine about 45 minutes before he should be down.  I turned down the lights and read him 4 books.  Then, it was bath time and he took a long bath with mom adding water so he could sit up in it (oh yeah, he can sit up pretty well on his own now!)  I had a mat set out for a baby massage (which he hated) so I got him dressed and fed him and he was too hyper to hold still and eat.  I sang him 3 songs, shushed him and put him down in his crib.  Then Liz let him cry out some of that energy for a few minutes and went in and he ate 5 oz and put him in his crib.   He cried for 13 minutes with 1 check on him (30 seconds of calm voice without touching) and he was asleep.

The second part of this training is getting him to not eat at night.  The book explains that we need to wake him up to eat at times he does not normally wake up to break the cycle.  So, we chose 11pm and 3am.  We woke him up at 11pm and Liz said that he probably thought it was a good dream until she tried to burp him and then he started crying.  She put him down like that and he was asleep in less than 1 minute.  He woke up at 2:30 am and Liz did the regular check ins until 3am when she fed him a bottle and fell asleep after 3 minutes of crying.

Now we take 1oz away from both bottles each night (he is 16.5 lbs and 5.5 months old so he does not need to eat or get a diaper changed at night at this point) until he does not have a bottle at night anymore.

I was shocked by how well this went.  It was like Jude said, “yeah moms, quit coddling me I am a big boy now!”  We got the book, (corrected.  this is the actual book) “The Sleep Easy Solution” by Jennifer waldburger and Jill Spivack* which is a lie in the title, but is like Ferber methods only an easier read.

I am not saying that from now on sleep is going to be easy.  I am sure there will be set backs just like his normal sleep, but he did it with grace the first night and here is hoping he does again moving forward!

On a fun note, he is getting baptized our family’s way by eating avocado for the first time tonight!  Welcome to the family little man, now you are one of us:)  Avocado is the only thing Liz says she would go to war for.  She calls it “green gold” and we would probably eat it with every meal if possible.  We love it just on a spoon, so we are hoping he does too!  I have enjoyed feeding him foods and he really likes it and is really good at taking it from a spoon now.  So very cute!

-S