sleep, revisited

So the blog has been a bit quiet lately in the sleep department, but that is only because I have censored it from you readers. Sleep is still, and has been, a major struggle for us, but I am pleased to report that I finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. Any progress we might of made last Fall to establish healthy sleep routines all went out the window during holiday season and the few colds we got. And so once Eddie was healthy again, and ultimately once I was healthy again too after my bout of stomach flu, I vowed to myself, this is it, we HAVE to do something. Lack of sleep has taken its toll on us and I know it is related to me getting sick. It is no fun to be a mom when you are sick. And so I fervently sought the assistance of a friend of a friend whom is a sort of sleep consultant; we have been in communication now since last summer and she has supported all of my natural instincts, as in to continue breastfeeding and soothe him to sleep and not let him cry. But suddenly now she is turning it up a notch and taking the role of a coach; the type of coach that blows a whistle loud and hard, the type of coach that makes you run sprints when the ball drops without an attempt to save it. She is pushing me to be in control of my family's well-being...through sleep training, yet again.

And so here we are again listening to the wails and whines of our little guy. Our first step was to address our sleep routine during the day. Instead of allowing him to fall asleep on the boob before a nap, I now feed him with the lights on or in another room and put in into his crib while he is still awake. It took a week of doing this before I could claim success; he now goes into his crib all on his own and nuzzles into his blankies and falls asleep without any cries or whines. Then we modified the same routine at the end of the day. Again, instead of turning the lights off during our nursing, we now leave the lights on so that he doesn't fall asleep on the boob and I put him into his crib drowsy but awake. This is successful 90% of the time; there are still evenings when he is exhausted and falls asleep on me. But he never makes a peep when he is placed into his crib, as if to say that he is tired and knows that his bed is the best place for him to be. And then the hardest part of the training, which is to not go to him when he wakes up in the middle of night. This is the stage we are in now. We have to allow him the opportunity to fall back to sleep on his own, and then soon, hopefully his hormones will regulate and he will cease to wake up so much in the middle of the night. Friday night he woke up at 11 pm and cried for 5 minutes and then fell back asleep. Yey. But then Dad came home from a hockey game and Marty barked and Eddie woke up at 11:30 and then seemed to fall back asleep, but then I heard him cry again around 12:15. So I went to him. He didn't eat much at dinner, so I fed him. And I didn't feel bad about this decision. He slept until 4 a.m. and then cried a bit and fell back to sleep. Woke up at 8 a.m. Great! Saturday/Sunday is now a blur and I cannot remember the details, but I know we let him cry at one point and I think I went to him once, around 4 a.m. and then we woke up at 7. Then last night he officially slept through the night - went to bed at 7:30 and woke up at 6 a.m. Not bad, not bad. As they say in one of my favorite '90s movies Major League, "starting to come together, starting to come together."