Johnson: April 2011

This is mostly for me so that with my next child I remember what I did ;)

Last week I decided that it was time to start sleep training Payten, let me tell you I was not looking forward to it and did not want to hear her screaming and crying for a long time. I had read in my book, "What to Expect the first year" and it said at 3 months they should start only waking up about once a night and by the time they are 11 lbs they are just fine sleeping through the night without eating. So I thought it was time to start getting her to sleep through the night. She has been a random sleeper, sometimes she wakes up a couple times during the night and others just once. A handful of times she will sleep all through the night until about 6 or 7am. She would just tease me when she did that because she would never do it the next night.

So last week I started when she would wake up at 3 am (was a regular at that time waking up and then usually again around 5-6 am) so when she woke up at 3 I let her cry for about 10 minutes and then get her and feed her. I did that a couple nights and then extended it to 15 minutes. Then after we did about 15 minutes and then feed her, the next night we picked her up and walked around the house trying to distract her by looking at the lights outside. When we did that she cried and then stopped and then cried and then stopped for the whole time. Then we feed her. Each night we did that it pushed her waking up to be a little later each night. The next night after we waited a half hour she woke up around 4. So I kept her in her bed and put her binky in her mouth, she calmed down and then would start to whimper a little, I would talk to her and calm her down and tell her that she was alright. After about a half hour of doing that she fell asleep for about 10 minutes!! I thought wow that wasn't so hard after all! But then she woke up again and I repeated the same things again, "shhhhhh", "you are alright", binky, patty her on the back, "shhhhhhhh", etc and repeat for another half hour. For the whole hour I did that I calmed her down so that she would not cry the whole time. In the book it said that you just need to get them out of the habit of eating at the same time and that it is good to pick them up and calm them to push it a little later until the eat. So after an hour exactly I feed her. She drank her bottle really fast and then went right to sleep.

The next night she sleep until 6 am, eat in 15 minutes and then went back to bed until 9:30. The next night she sleep until 7 am and then ate really quick and then went back to bed until 9:30. The next 2 nights she sleep until 8am! So I think we have conquered the dreaded sleep training! I did not have to have her cry it out for too long and when I did let her cry it out, I would talk to her to try and sooth her. I feel so refreshed now when I wake up. However, I will be honest I do need to sleep train myself because I still wake up about once during the night out of habit. So once I can sleep through the night myself I will feel like a million dollars!

When I put Payten down to bed at night I make sure she does not fall asleep while she is drinking her bottle. After she is done drinking I finish getting her all swaddled up and put her mittens on her and then lay her in bed while she is awake. Then she rolls over and looks around for a little bit and then falls asleep. I wanted to make sure that she knew that when it's night time and she is tired that she can fall asleep on her own. In the video I put her down and then heard me talking so she turned and looked at me, but after I finished filming she rolled over and closed her eyes and went to sleep!

Dont mind my sick sounding voice, we have all had colds and Payten and mine are lingering for a long time. I'm doing tons better but poor Payten still has a stuffy nose.