The Cleveland Adventures: Sleep Training: Night #1

For the past 2 to 2.5 weeks, Eliza has not been sleeping well. She is waking up every 2 hours and then it is taking a good hour for her to get back to sleep. Needless to say, she has a very tired mommy. At some point you just have to throw in the towel, so I called her pediatrician yesterday and said, "HELP!" She gave us some good pointers, but nothing concrete. So, when Mommy Group came to my house yesterday, Jenny Tyner suggested that we try The Sleep Sense program. At this point, I had nothing to lose. So, after they left, we went on a coffee date with Amanda, stopped by the Resource Center to say hi and then came home so I could start reading. I read the entire book by the time she needed to go to bed. Thankfully, we already had her schedule documented (because I am a nerd like that), and we already had a solid bedtime routine in place, so all we had to do was start!

Since Michael did not have time to catch up, I had him help me and just coached him along when we put her down. I must say, I didn't think Michael was going to make it while she was crying. The program says that you need to get rid of "sleep props" AKA pacifiers when putting them down. Poor miss Eliza cried for 28 very long minutes before she learned to put herself to sleep. We went in every 10 minutes to reassure her, but it was still the saddest little cry I have ever heard. While she was crying, Michael and I read through the workbook together and made a plan!

She woke up at 11pm and cried. The deal is that we let her cry for 10 minutes for before we go in to reassure her. This is very different than normal because I usually rush in to her room as soon as I hear her moving on the monitor. She cried for 3 minutes and then was able to go back to sleep. Amazing!

She woke up again at 2:45am and this time I fed her. When I put her back in her crib, she sang to herself for about 30 minutes, no crying, and then went to sleep. She then slept until 6:30 and woke up without crying. After giving her a few minutes to see if she was awake for good, I went in and gave her ALOT of loving.

After feeding her, I needed food and caffeine, so I sat her in front of the door so that she could look at the birds and flowers. She played just long enough for me to eat and then was over her toy for the morning. The poor thing looks tired :(

After an hour and change of being awake, she was getting pretty fussy, so I put her back down for a nap. On the way to her bed, I shot a pic of the cute little owl on her booty :) Thanks for the outfit Todd, Angie, Bryce and Alexis!