My experience with sleep training

Finally. FINALLY! I am a proud mom of a sleep-trained baby and I can’t believe it! So, here I’ll be sharing my personal experience with it. Please, remember that I’m not offering you any kind of advice, because I am a first time mom and I’m completely clueless and terrified.

Also, the original post that lead me to this particular sleep training program is right here - http://www.parenting.com/article/sleep-training. I strongly suggest you check it out.

Long story short, my baby is really spoiled. I let her fall asleep during breastfeeding, then when she would wake up after 30 minutes I would walk her to sleep, offer her some more milk when she wakes up every 2-3 hours at night and if this doesn’t work, I would just walk her again. It was terrible, but I didn’t want to cry it out, because we tried it once and it went horrible for us. All that was until we went to our doctor for 9 month check-up. He said that she was 200 g underweight and I needed to feed her more solids and only breastfeed her 4 times a day. That’s when I realized that I can’t do it unless she sleeps through the night. I started getting anxious and worried because I didn’t want to go through it again. But my daughter’s weight was more important. That’s when I stumbled upon that post about gentle 9 days sleep-training.

Basically, you put your baby in the crib awake and spend the first three nights petting her and talking to her until she falls asleep, then for two-three nights you sit halfway between the crib and the door and talk to her from there, then you move all the way to the door and by the 9^th night supposedly you just walk out and everything is amazing, people cheering and rainbows because you’ve got yourself a sleep-trained child. When I read this I thought: “Yeah, right. Like this is going to work.” Well, it did. And here I’ll just walk you through everything I did night by night as well as updating you on how we are doing now, about two weeks since we started.

The first night. At around 6:59 I started feeding my daughter. Also, at this point I introduced the little blanket you’re supposed to give them (check out the original article for that), but I’m not going to talk about it because even until now Sofi doesn’t really hold it or pays any attention to it or any other object. As I was saying… By 7:15 she finished (did not get drowsy or tried to fall asleep) and I put her in her crib. At first she was very confused about it and got up looking at me with this “Aren’t you going to pick me up and walk around?” look. I was talking and stroking her back as she was getting up and sitting down again, playing with her blanket etc. At 7:44 she started to spend a lot of time laying still and that’s when she really started to calm down. Also, by that point I didn’t know what to talk about, so I just started repeating myself or telling her stories about how my husband and I met etc. At 7:56 she started rubbing her eyes and complaining. All this time I was worried and completely skeptical about this whole thing. At 8:03 she started crying. It was pretty intense, but still not one of those unstoppable uncontrollable tantrums. Just sleepy cry. At 8:16 she fell asleep. I was completely shocked. It took me 1 hour, but it totally worked. She slept for 6 hours and a half, made some noises during those 6 hours, but went back to sleep on her own. At about 2:49 she woke up and started crying, didn’t seem like she would go back to sleep, so I sat next to her again and did the exact same thing – talked and stroked her back. Also, I gave her a little bit of water, because she was supposed to go from feeding 3-4 times a night to none, so I thought it would help. She cried for 1 and a half hours and they seem to be ok with you picking her up in the middle of the night, but I thought to myself “If she could do it before, she can do it again” and decided to only pick her up if the crying gets too intense. It didn’t. At 4:19 she was asleep and slept exactly until 7 a.m.

The second night. 7:02 I started feeding her. Again, she didn’t get drowsy or sleepy and was completely awake when I put her in her crib at 7:14. She was very cool about it, immediately tried to get comfortable. I was doing the same thing as the first night. At around 7:19 she started complaining a little, but this time didn't try to get up. The issue we faced was too much energy. She didn’t seem to know how to calm herself down and settle for sleep: her legs were kicking and running, her arms were grabbing everything around and scratching the walls of the crib. Slowly she stopped moving and after 34 minutes at 7:48 she was asleep. Slept for 9 hours! I couldn’t believe it. At 4:48 she woke up and was having a really hard time so I started counting sheep for some reason. Counted to 260 sheep and she fell asleep at 5:40 and slept until 7 a.m.

The third night. 7:10 I started breastfeeding. At 7:23 I put her in her crib. This time I decided not to touch her, because the next night I’ll be moving away from the crib, so I thought she should learn to fall asleep without me stroking her while I’m still sitting very close. Weirdly, she didn’t even complain and was asleep by 7:51. Slept 11 hours and woke up at exactly 7. I should mention that during those 11 hours she woke up once or twice, but only complained for a minute or so and went back to sleep without any help.

The fourth night. 7:01 Started feeding her. 7:08 I put her in her crib and sat half way across the room. I talked a lot, sometimes even repeating my stories over and over. She played around for 10 minutes or so and seemed to have a lot of energy. At 7:20 she started complaining very strongly and was obviously babbling something very bad about me. At 7:46 she fell asleep for 9 hours 34 minutes. Woke up at 5:21 and no matter what I did (no picking up, just stroking and talking as before) she would wake up every time and was very upset. At around 6:32 I decided that it’s pointless to keep trying and just started the day. That particular day she refused both naps as well.

The fifth night. 7:05 I started feeding her. At 7:15 put her in her crib. At 7:19 she started complaining and under a minute went into full crying. When it got very intense I started counting sheep again (guys, there is something about it, counting sheep does miracles). Counted to 50 just to get her to stop crying and then carried on with talking after she calmed down. 7:32 she fell asleep. Woke up At 4 and then a couple of times between 5 and 6, but went to sleep on her own. Woke up completely at 7 a.m.

The sixth night. 6:58 I started feeding her, by 7:07 she was in bed. This time I went all the way to the door and tried to only talk when she was crying, remaining silent the rest of the time. She cried right away, but in 14 minutes at 7:21 she fell asleep. Slept for 11 hours 50 minutes.

The seventh night. 7:02 started feeding her. At 7:16 put her in her crib. Just like the previous night she started crying straight away. She sort of fell asleep, but then as she was changing positions she saw me and started crying all over again. I stayed in the room, but moved so she couldn’t see me. At 7:32 she fell asleep for 11 hours.

The eighth night. 7:09 I started feeding her. At 7:21 put her to bed. She cried immediately I moved out of her sight, which only made it worse, but I didn’t give in and didn’t talk apart from saying “It’s ok, you can go to sleep now”. It took her a while to settle down, but by 7:35 she was asleep. Woke up after 7 hours at about 2:30. She couldn’t go back to sleep, so I gave her a little bit of water and sat next to her, but didn’t talk or touch. She slept from 2:44 to 3:30. After that the timing on my phone goes a little odd, because I was half asleep next to her in the sofa. The reason I decided to stay is because every time I tried to leave the room she would wake up. One time she even jumped up because she was afraid I would leave her. I slept next to her so that she could see me. At 5:37 she fell asleep and woke up at 6:16. After that she couldn’t go back to sleep.

The ninth night. 6:54 I started feeding her. At 7:05 put her in her crib. She started crying right away. I decided to stay in the room, but out of her sight. She went into this almost-tantrum-coughing-can’t-stop crying, so I moved back to the door and talked to her. It calmed her down almost immediately, but as soon as I stopped she got upset all over again. At 7:27 she went to sleep for 11 hours. She woke up at 6:40.

The tenth night. 7:11 I started feeding her. At 7:30 I put her in the crib and left the room. She cried immediately, but by 11:34 she stopped crying and slept for about 11 hours until 6:35.

The eleventh night. 7 I started feeding her. At 7:21 put her in her crib and walked out. In just one minute she went to sleep and woke up only at about 6:08. I couldn’t get her to sleep after that.

A little more than a week has passed since then. Every time I walk out of her room she still cries pretty badly. Some days it takes her 40 minutes to calm down, other days just 1-2 minutes. I listen very closely to my baby monitor just in case she starts puking or crying because of pain or something like that, but this hasn’t happened so far. She sleeps for 11-12 hours and sometimes I even have to wake her up at 7 or 7:20. She does wake up at night every once in a while, but after 5 minutes she goes back to sleep. To fix her early waking I put some dark curtains in her room and started dressing her in warmer socks. I don’t know which one did the trick, but she sleeps until 7 now every day. We do have a night time routine, but I won’t go into this here. Maybe, I’ll do another post just about that.

Bottom line: sleep training is possible even if you don’t believe in it. You just need to find something that works for you. And it is definitely worth it. You don’t realize how much sleep deprivation is affecting your mood. Now that I’m sleeping well I can really see what a zombie I used to be before.

I hope I helped some of you to overcome your fears and also shed some light on how sleep training really goes, because what happened to me wasn’t anything like the things that I read on the Internet. It is not going to be all uphill. You are going to have some pretty rough nights and it will seem like all your work has been for nothing, but believe me when I say: it wasn’t. Keep going, keep hoping, keep believing in yourself and you will achieve anything.

Stay happy and well rested y'all!