Forging Ahead

We moved on to the next step and completed three more days of night weaning/sleep training. So far I'm hopeful.

The Second Three Nights

Again, the nursing to sleep stops at 11 p.m. When he wakes up, hug him and cuddle him for a few minutes, but do not feed him, put him down awake. Putting him down awake is a crucial part of this whole endeavor because it really does teach him to fall asleep with a little less contact and then a little less. Not feeding is the big change during these three nights. One-year-old babies can easily go for those seven hours (or more) with no calories. They like to get fed a little through the night, but physiologically and nutritionally, this is not a long time to go without food...

...During these second three nights, some babies will cry and protest for ten minutes at a time and some will go for an hour or more. Your toddler is aware that you are right beside him, offering comfort and soothing. It just isn’t the mode of comfort he wants at the moment. It is hard to listen to him fuss, but it will work. I believe that a well-loved baby, after a year or more in the family bed, will be the ultimate beneficiary of his parents getting more sleep. Not coincidentally, the parents benefit “big time,” too.

Night Seven

Sebastian was down by 11pm and slept through until 5 am! Because it was so close to our chosen time I let him nurse and we slept for another couple hours or so.

Night Eight

He was tired tonight and was falling asleep in his high chair of all places. Of course as soon as I carried him up to bed he became a wild thing and was wanting to play *sigh*. He was asleep earlier than usual, however, and was asleep by 10:30 pm. He woke up around 4:45 am. At that point, since he went to sleep earlier, I nursed his as if it was after 6. Are we caving? Maybe but since he has a big chunk of sleep I feel ok "caving".

Night Nine

With visions of Britney Spears on Glee dancing in his head (he was mesmerized by that episode- LOL)Sebastian was down quickly with hardly any nursing and asleep by 11pm. Alex has a man cold so he chose to stay up for a while so not to disturb us. He came back to bed around 1:30 am and woke us up. I was not happy and neither was Sebastian who cried and immediately wanted to nurse back to sleep.

According to Dr. Jay's method I couldn't nurse him so I rubbed his back (which he didn't like since he kept shoving my hand away), Alex sang to him (which he also didn't like), but miracle of miracles, he stoped fussing and put himself back to sleep within ten minutes, possibly five.

Next thing I knew it was 7:50. Hallelujah!