...I raved about Danica being a great sleeper?
Well, she still sleeps for 11 hours, eats, then sleeps for an hour or two more.
But...
During those 11 hours, she wakes me up about a dozen times! Sometimes she's awake and sometimes she's kind of just whining in her sleep. Ahh! I've been going insane during the nights.
My nights have been basically no sleep at all.
Saturday night I got 4 hours of sleep total... 2 in the beginning of the night and 2 in the end.
Sunday night I woke up 18 times with her.
I've been advised 100 times to turn off the monitors and let her cry it out... a lot of those times by Tyler. But it's easier said than done to begin that. I do wish we started sooner, though, because Danica's very mobile now. When she's awake in her crib she moves a lot; going from the bottom of the crib to the top, to laying where her feet are supposed to be, to trying to roll onto her stomach and flopping back over. I think that keeps her up.
Yesterday, my friend Brittany and I were talking about it and she was told (when she was avoiding starting this with her daughter) that she's depriving her daughter the chance to learn how to soothe herself to sleep.
Gulp. Talk about feeling guilty!
Last night we decided to try the "Cry it out" Method.
If you want to hear how our night went... keep reading.
She woke up about 40 minutes after we put her down for the night (which has been pretty normal lately). She whined for 10ish minutes. Then the crying began! It took her about 25 minutes to fall asleep. Which is pretty nice, compared to what I've heard other moms had to deal with. (Dealing with the crying...for the most part... wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. There were some cries, though, that were SO sad.) She was asleep for 5 minutes and then started crying again. But that cry was only 2 minutes and then she slept. Until 3!
I couldn't believe it when I woke up and looked at the clock.
She woke up and whined for a while. From the hard crying to sound sleep was 15 minutes. I thought that this method was beginning to work! I checked on her and noticed her blanket was over her face and she was also laying horizontally in her crib, but I wasn't about to move her. Taking the blanket off her face though, woke her up. I then decided to feed her (at 4:30) since she was already awake. With a little crying, she was asleep by 5 and woke up for the day at 7:30.
She's in her second nap today and each time she has spent less than 10 minutes crying before she falls asleep. This makes me so happy! She's probably exhausted from last night, too, because of all the crying.
I've started to sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to her to add to her routine before naptime or bedtime, and I think that seems to help.
We noticed that when we tried the method of crying it out and would also go in every so often to calm and comfort her, it just made matters worse. I've heard it work for other moms, but Danica would just get more worked up when we wouldn't pick her up or when we'd walk out of the room. It was better when we didn't go in.
I know this method isn't for everyone, but it seems to be working for us.
Granted this is just the beginning of day 2, so we'll see.
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It will be so much better once she learns to put herself to sleep. I did it with Colby eventually and it's been great ever since. It did take a long time for him to go to sleep without any crying but now he does. Also he's the same way as Danica and will get really worked up if I go in to calm him, so I never go in. Sometimes now he randomly wakes up around 11 or12 and I just let him cry because if I go in there he will never fall back asleep and will end up in my bed! lol It's hard to start but feels so good when you can sleep without interuptions. :) Good luck and keep it up.
ReplyDeleteIf you want you can check out this blog. It's all about the book babywise (which is all about keeping baby on a schedual and cry it out) and troubleshooting problems with sleep and other stuff. It's pretty good. If you have any problems you can check it out and see, there might be something that can help you. http://babywisemom.blogspot.com/
PS-sorry I wrote a book again. :)
Stick with it!!! You will be SOOO Happy you did! One thing that really helped brock in the beginning was a musical mobile over his crib. If he woke in the middle of the night and couldn't calm down I would just go in an wind it up for him, wouldn't do the comfort thing because that didn't work with us either. But he loved to listen and watch the mobile and it would help him calm down and go right back to sleep.
ReplyDeletePretty soon you will be sleeping all night and wondering why you didn't do this sooner!
Don't give up on the crying it out thing! It is so much better!! I did it with Jocelyn when she was only 2 months old and I'm so glad I did. (Granted, when she was only 2 months old I did get up to feed her in the night, but I just would lay her down at night awake instead of rocking her).
ReplyDeleteBabies really need to learn to soothe themselves. And about the blanket over the face- that is the only way Jocelyn would sleep, so just make sure they aren't thick blankets and it's no big deal if they are there all night.
Good job sticking with it. Some things that helped me while she cried were listening to music with headphones, taking a shower, or leaving and having casey deal with it once in a while. Good luck!