Sleep Training

Luc has been napping pretty well lately. I swaddle him, give him his paci and usually rock or nurse him to sleep. He has been doing about 1 hour to 2 hours, usually averaging about 1 hour and 40 minutes. Overnight he is awful though. He wakes every 1 to 2 hours and almost always struggles to get back to sleep. Sometimes he even stays up crying for an hour or two so we decided that for our sanity, we needed to sleep train. 

On January 23rd we began sleep training Luc. I was really nervous going in, but optimistic. With Hudson we had no expectations going in and in 3 nights he went from waking every two hours to sleeping 11 hours straight, with if memory serves me correctly, a 53 minute first stretch of crying and a little over an hour being the longest later that first night. Now I will say I always put Hudson down awake and he always went back to sleep as long as I fed him, whereas I spend a lot of time getting Luc to sleep every night, sometimes put him down asleep and he often wakes randomly for long periods of time overnight. We knew Luc seemed worse than Hudson going in, but we were still very hopeful that in less than a week we would be getting some much needed sleep. 

I made some allergy free fruity pebbles and printed out our sleep chart and mentally prepared myself for night 1-the most exhausting and difficult night. We ditched Luc's paci and the swaddle, kissed him goodnight and prayed he would magically be easy to sleep train. Boy did I underestimate this child! I was not even close to prepared for the stubbornness that is Luc! Hudson whimpered and tried to get himself to sleep from the beginning. Luc SCREAMED and I mean SCREAMED for an hour and 40 minutes. He finally passed out from exhaustion and I burst into tears. It was such a long, miserable 100 minutes that I must have eaten the entire tray of fruity pebble treats. Too bad I was still nursing because tequila probably would have been the more preferable option. Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, after only 10 minutes of sleep, Luc starting hysterically crying again. After another 45 minutes, at 10:15pm,  I couldn't take it anymore and went in and got him. Which is probably the worst thing I could have done because it just re-enforced to him that screaming and crying gets you what you want, but I just couldn't take it anymore.I went in, fed Luc, then put him down awake in his crib. He got himself to sleep at 10:30, but only slept for 20 minutes. He put himself back to sleep at 11, but woke up 20 minutes later crying again. At that point we were so exhausted we brought him into our bed. Half way through the night Nic swaddled Luc and put him back into his bed. It was an exhausting night of no sleep and a big fat F in the sleep training department. 

The next day, January 24th, we decided to continue with the sleep training. They don't recommend starting with naps so it would have probably been better to wait until that night, but I was nervous to spend too much time continuing our old habits-especially since we needed to utilize the weekend so I would have Nic's support.

We cheated during the first nap- we swaddled him with his arms out and gave him his paci- but he knocked it out immediately. He still cried with the occasional scream, but he at least had a few moments of quiet trying to get himself to sleep. At one point Hud grabbed the monitor and said, "Luc please go to sleep."

Luc did a little bit better with his naps throughout the day and even seemed to be trying to learn to self soothe, but night two was miserable again. Luc cried for an hour and a half to start off the night and did another hour and a half of crying at 4am and those were just the highlights. 

On night three, January 25th, Luc seemed to be asleep after only about 20 minutes of crying, but he only slept for 55 minutes before waking and crying again. Before we began the sleep training, some nights (and naps) Luc would cry regardless of what I did-hold him, rock him, walk him in the stroller etc. so the crying isn't as torturous as the screaming. In fact, that was the discussion I had with both Dr. Sethi and Dr. Braskett. I told them he cries no matter what I do-and for hours-so it seemed as though we might as well go for it with the sleep training. It took Luc another hour of crying before he finally fell asleep. He slept for 20 minutes again before waking up crying! He just sleeps long enough to take the edge off then he seems to have recharged to protest with crying again. 

On night four, January 26th, Luc decided that he needed to learn to roll at 5am. This kid would apparently rather do anything other than sleep. I hope his determination and stubbornness serve him well someday. 

After a few more nights of this torture, Nic and I reviewed our notes. The author of the Sleep Easy Solution has you keep a chart so that you can see how your child is improving each night (as is the case with normal children). When we looked at Luc though, there was no improvement at all. Every night he is averaging about 3 hours of awake time crying. There is absolutely zero improvement. He wakes anywhere between 4 and 7 times a night and he has no patterns to his waking. We decided we were too exhausted to continue and it felt hopeless anyways so we called it quits. Perhaps Luc just isn't ready yet.