Who knew that teaching kids to sleep could be so difficult? With my son, sleep was the most difficult part about being a parent. Whether it was getting him to sleep or the lack of ours. It was almost 9 full months of waking during the night before he began sleeping through the whole night. I can honestly say that I didn’t know what sleep depravation was before becoming a mom. Not only was he waking up 1-2 times a night, my husband and I were both working full time jobs. Getting through some of the days were rough.
When we decided that enough was enough and we were really ready to start sleep training, I think that was even more difficult. We were cutting out middle of the night feeds because at that time a bottle was the only thing getting him back to sleep. Was it a great idea to get started down that path? In retrospect, of course not. However, as first time parents we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. Once we were ready to embark on sleep training, it was time to decide just what method were we going to use. Cry it out? The Ferber Method? We did sort of a combination of both of these.
We really wanted to teach ways for our son to self-sooth while also knowing that we would be there if he needed us. After some trial and error, we really just started fading back the times that we would console him. Once down in his crib awake, if he was crying we would check on him and console after 5 minutes. After a few days at 5 minutes, we would check in at 10 minutes. 15 minutes would have been next, but 10 minutes seemed to be the sweet spot. After crying off and on for about 10 minutes, he would get himself comfortable and relax and eventually put himself to sleep. When he would wake in the middle of the time, we followed the same rules and he would be able to get himself back down.
You guys, you might not agree with our methods, but this was the light at the end of the tunnel for us. Once he began sleeping through the night, parenting got that much better because we were also getting to sleep again! In all honesty, it only took a couple of weeks for this to really work and him to sleep through the night. This method might not work for all, but it’s what worked for us. We really had to analyze his sleep patterns and reflect on what we were doing as parents in order to make the best choice for our family.
Let me tell you, this was not the end of our sleep schedules journey by a long shot. Stay tuned for how things went during sleep regressions and with our baby girl.
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