Our son, Jack was a sleep training prodigy. After my husband and I returned to work we hit a sleep-deprived wall sometime around the 5 month mark. We were tired, we were cranky, we were not the best versions of ourselves for ourselves or for eachother or honestly even for Jack. We decided it was time to rip off the sleep training bandaid. We called friends who had been through it, I did some research and framed it within the context of my understanding of behavioral principles and then amended those strategies to what I felt I could handle emotionally as a mother. We braced for impact. The first nap he cried for 30 minutes, we checked in every ten minutes and rubbed his back and told him we loved him. We sat outside his door while he cycled down and held each other and watched the monitor (essentially listening to his crying in surround sound to make the whole experience extra terrible.) The second nap that day he cycled down within 20 minutes. By bedtime that evening he was asleep within 15 minutes. Within 3 days we were putting on PJs, reading two stories, putting him in the crib and he was just curling up and happily, peacefully falling asleep….and staying asleep….until around 6am the next morning (a totally reasonable time to be awake) and then, get this, he would eat and go BACK to sleep for like 3 more hours. We felt like parenting GODS. We. Had. This. Ish. Down.
We only have one child yet. Thanks to the very good advice from some UK maternity nurses we got rid of night feeds early (~ two months). We finally dared getting rid of the dummy and sleep training him after 4 months and OMG we get 12h of sleep every night plus 2-2.5h during the noon nap.
I have no idea how this can work with a second child (or really any kind of non pandemic life) but this is so much better than I expected parenthood to be, I guess we'll find out. At any rate for now we are huge believers in the fixed schedule as it just worked so well. Perhaps hiring a maternity nurse for the first months is really the way to go?
Interesting read!
We only have one child yet. Thanks to the very good advice from some UK maternity nurses we got rid of night feeds early (~ two months). We finally dared getting rid of the dummy and sleep training him after 4 months and OMG we get 12h of sleep every night plus 2-2.5h during the noon nap.
I have no idea how this can work with a second child (or really any kind of non pandemic life) but this is so much better than I expected parenthood to be, I guess we'll find out. At any rate for now we are huge believers in the fixed schedule as it just worked so well. Perhaps hiring a maternity nurse for the first months is really the way to go?