Dr. Ferber, Part II

It's now been a little over a week, but last night was something of a victory for us.

Henry went to bed at 8:30pm. When I left the room, he was lying down in his crib, talking quietly to himself. A few minutes later, I noticed that it was all quiet and he was asleep. Perfect! Later in the evening, he woke up and cried for about two minutes, but then all was quiet again. Once again, this is exactly what we wanted! But the best part is that when he woke up in the morning, it was 6:30am. This may not sound ideal, but for the last few days he's been waking up between 4-5am (and crying until 6am, when I finally let him get out of bed). I consider 6:30 to be a big improvement.

So. Easy bedtime, self-soothing, and sleeping for 10 hours. What more could I ask for? Good work, Henry! And thanks, Dr. Ferber.

Dr. Ferber, Part I

After 8 months of less than ideal sleeping conditions around here, I finally got a book from the library to help me "solve my child's sleep problems," by Richard Ferber, M.D. This is basically a cry-it-out method, but with a plan so you don't feel like such a cruel parent. The idea is to help them learn to fall asleep on their own without sleep associations that involve help from the parents. No nursing to sleep, no rocking, no patting, no pacifier, even. Just occasional visits at increasing intervals to reassure the baby (and you). My primary goal for this is to get Henry to be able to fall back to sleep when he wakes up in the middle of night (without me having to go in and help). Here's how things have gone:

Day 1 (Thursday): Got off to a late start, as we were at Holy Thursday Mass in the evening. But he cried for 30 minutes before falling asleep for another 30. Then he cried for about 75 minutes before sleeping for 2 hours. This sort of pattern continued through the night, with both Henry and I getting a total of maybe 4-5 hours of sleep (Matt had earplugs and slept fine).

Day 2 (Friday): Nap times didn't go so well- 3 naps for a total of just over an hour. But the poor kid was totally exhausted, so we didn't go to the Good Friday service at all. Sigh. Night time was a little better, but there were still several long periods of crying at different points in the night. At some point I decided it wasn't working for me to go in, so I just stayed awake listening.

Day 3 (Saturday): Nap times were still a struggle. Finally in the afternoon I was so tired that I broke the "rules" and took a nap with Henry. I slept for an hour, he slept for even longer. It took him about 30 minutes to fall asleep that night, but from 9pm-5:30am, I didn't hear a sound from his room. Alleluia, indeed! He might have even slept longer if Matt hadn't felt the need to go in and poke him when he got up.

We're now on Day 4, and according the book, things should be mostly solved by this point. We did not have much success at naptime, though, so we'll see how the night goes. Let's hope he does even better than last night!

Baby Steps

We pulled out a new toy last night. We're still getting used to it...

And also: I'm not sure there's really anything quite as cute as a baby with sunglasses. We put them on for a walk and he didn't take them off... even after we got home and inside.