Sleep Training 101

Here is how I've been spending my time in the last 3 or 4 weeks....


And sleep training would not be complete without a log



Greg is honestly so sick of hearing about all these different sleep methods, but we really didn't have to go through any of this with Maggie. She slept great right off the bat with very little "training." I'm a researcher, so I've been hard at work reading and trying to figure out the best way to train Elliott to sleep longer than 3-4 hours at a time. The main conclusion I came up with was that the poor boy was just as sleep deprived as we were and therefore his over-tiredness was contributing to all the wake ups. So, our plan went a little something like this......

1. Early bedtime--Elliott went down for bed no later than 2 hours after he woke from his last nap...one night it was as early as 5:45. The point of this was to try and get rid of his sleep debt.
2. Eliminating feedings in the middle of the night--If he woke before 10, I would feed him (which he did on the first 3 nights). After that, he wasn't getting his mama until 3 a.m., and Greg was on duty. We always gave him 10 minutes initially to put himself back to sleep--didn't happen....the only way this kid knew how to go back to sleep was to nurse. So, Greg would go in the room and pat him for no more than a minute and then leave (never picked him up). The intervals of time got longer and longer each night....a few nights seemed to go on FOREVER!!!!

Here is what we have now....a happy baby, a happy and more well-rested mama and daddy and a baby who last night slept from 6:40 p.m.-4:20 a.m. without waking then nursed and was back to sleep until 7:50 this morning!!! How's that for success?????