Sleep Training

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Who would have thought that you could train yourself to sleep? Well, for adults this is difficult, but for a baby it is a necessity. Babies crave the closeness of another human being, mainly their mom and dad, and like to be held and rocked to sleep, after a while they get used to this. This is where the problem lies. The baby gets used to being rocked to sleep and never learns to fall asleep by themselves. Not only does this cause a problem for them at bedtime, but it causes issues related to waking in the middle of the night as well since the baby is not able to fall back asleep by him/herself.

Waking in the middle of the night a lot can cause a whole other problem of the baby not getting enough sleep and then being sleep deprived which can in turn cause….sleep issues. It’s a vicious cycle. Night time sleep issues tends to carry over into nap time problems as well, which again, can cause sleep deprivation.

There are so many different sleep training methods out there and it can be quite confusing when trying to figure out which one you will try. Our boys were about 4.5 months old when we even tried to start sleep training. They would take naps all throughout the day but only 30 mins at a time and we could tell they were not getting enough sleep. The boys have always slept pretty well but they would wake up a few times a night just wanting a pacifier or us to get them back to sleep. When we dropped the middle of the night bottle but were still getting up 3-4 times a night to get them back to sleep, we knew something had to change.

Everything you read says you need to put your child in bed awake, but drowsy. If you constantly put them in bed asleep, they will never learn to fall asleep by themselves and when they wake up in the middle of the night, they won’t be able to fall back asleep. So we make sure we put them to sleep awake, sometimes they are pretty drowsy and sometimes they are wide awake.

We chose to do the cry it out method . Before you go and judge us for letting our children lay in bed and cry themselves to sleep, you should first educate yourself on what the cry it out method entails. It does not mean laying your child in bed, shutting the door and letting them cry for an hour until they go to sleep. What it means is you put them in bed, kiss them, tell them goodnight and leave the room. Of course at first they are going to cry, we had a set time that we would let them cry and then go back in, give them their pacifier, put our hand on their chest, say goodnight and walk out. You wait the set time again and then go back in and repeat the process all over. We chose to wait 5 minutes the first two visits into the room and then extended it to 10-12 minutes there after. They wouldn’t cry the whole time either, they would whimper some and cry some and then there would be periods where they were quiet. After a few nights they got to the point of crying a little for no more than 2-3 minutes and then they were out.

After they started going to sleep easier, they would sleep through the night better and by about 5 months they were sleeping 11 or 12 hours straight. They would wake up some through the night but once we gave them their pacifier back, they would go right back to sleep. Of course now that they are teething, it does throw a wrench in things. The last few nights, they have woken up quite upset and had a hard time going back to sleep.

Another thing that helps with sleep training is to keep a consistent bedtime routine. We give the boys their bath starting about 7:00 pm and then get them dressed and let them play a little bit in their room before bottles. Once they drink their last bottle, we put them in their “happy sacks” and say good night. They may whimper for a minute or two, but some nights they don’t. And they usually sleep until the morning. They had been sleeping until 8:30AM or so but the last week they have been getting up about 730 AM so it may be time to make their bedtime a little earlier.

The type of sleep training we did worked for us. It may or may not work for you. Every child is different, even our two are different. Hayden can lay in the bed and cry and then go to sleep, while Ian gets worked up the more he cries and there is no going to sleep after that. So we let Hayden cry a little longer than we let Ian. If you are interested in sleep training your child, just try different avenues and find a solution that works for you and your family. Luckily we did find a solution for our babies and I praise God they sleep well because with two babies getting up all throughout the night, we would never sleep.