One Proud Mama

I must say, I truly am one proud mama! I am proud of Steve and I for sticking to a routine and program to get Jack into healthier sleep habits and I am crazy proud of Jack for doing so well with this big step!

So you all know of the terribly hard time we have been having with Jacks super inconsistent sleeping. We have tried a few different things and nothing seemed to be helping. We were getting more and more frustrated, especially me, spending hours everyday just trying to get him to nap or go to sleep at night. It was exhausting and starting to drive me slightly nutty. It was so hard to just take a deep breath when at night we'd stick with the routine of bottle, rocking in the chair until he fell asleep and then we'd lay him down in his crib. That did actually work for a long time, but not so much in the past couple months. He would sleep in our arms then jump up screaming as soon as we laid him down. It sometimes felt like it took forever to finally get him so asleep that he didn't care that he was put into his crib. Then after all that he was getting up once, twice and sometimes three times a night. It felt like we were going backwards instead of forward! Many nights just so that all three of us could get a good nights rest, we would just bring Jack into our bed if he woke up during the night.

So while we really didn't mind having him in bed with us, we also knew that it really wasn't good to do every night. We knew something had to give but we really felt pretty clueless at that point. Steve had talked with a woman from work for several days about the problems we were having. She too has a young child and had recommended a book to us. "Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child" by Marc Weissbluth MD. This past Friday, she let us borrow it to see if we liked it enough to buy. So Friday night came and I put Jack to sleep just as we had been doing. Once asleep I plopped down on the couch and turned straight to the section on Jacks age group.

There it was right in front of me, our story was in that book. Within the authors writing were stories of real parents who also had sleep troubles.... the child that fell asleep standing up on more then one occasion, trying all these different methods, and so on.... I couldn't help but smile knowing that we were not the only ones...

I read on and here are the main points.... There was a huge emphasis on the importance of a routine, naps and consistency. He stated that most of the time when children have trouble at night it is because the parents don't allow the child to learn the important skill of self soothing and how to put themselves to sleep. We knew Jack was not getting a goof nights sleep because he wasn't waking up happy. Everything he wrote made complete sense, we would let him cry but would always run to the rescue hence defeating the whole point. They somehow know that if they continue to cry that you will come rushing in, if you don't then they learn that that is what happens when it is time to sleep and that they must go to sleep themselves. We figured we'd give it a try. We realized that we were not making the situation any better when we went in so maybe this time it would work.

Early into the night Jack woke up crying, we left him and he cried for an hour before falling asleep. Te next day for nap time I went in laid him down and left, 50 minutes later he fell asleep (he recommends not letting them cry for more then an hour at nap time but no time limit at night). Every time, nap and night after that went even better. Tonight I kissed him goodnight, told him I love him, laid him down and closed the door. He cried for less then two minutes!! He is now waking up happy, napping better, can very quickly put himself back to sleep if he wakes during the night and has had fewer cranky moments during the day. We also moved his bed time earlier, also recommended in the book...It is helping!

I am so glad we gave it another try, the right way this time and that we are making real progress! Now the next huge thing will be the day I lay him down and he just rolls over and goes to sleep. I certainly recommend checking out the book, it completely made sense and I think in a way gave us the boost and confidence that it could be done, that even though its hard at first, a well rested happy baby in the en is the most important thing! A plus too was that through numerous of his studies, it appears that a well rested child has fewer nightmares and night terrors and that these healthy sleep habits developed at an early age continue on into adulthood.