sleep

Such a simple thing.

But any one who has EVER had a newborn, will also tell you it's a very elusive thing too.

It's also something that's been rather hard to come by at my house for the last 8 1/2 months. 

Now, I've sleep trained all of my kids with out much problem at all (we've done the Ferber method.)

But for some reason, I just couldn't do it this time around.  For years I've told people this (what I think) truth: I think every single kid can be sleep trained with this method. But I DON'T think every single parent can do it - you have to do what works for you.

And listening to Jellybean cry was just too much for me.

Maybe it's knowing that he's my last.

Maybe it's that unbelievably pathetic cry he has (sounding like he's cried himself hoarse after about 20 seconds).

Or maybe I'm just to tired to really do that hard now, better in the long run method.

Whatever the case, it just hasn't worked.

So here's where we were 3 weeks ago: Jellybean would wake up between 3 and 7 (no joke!) times a night.  And when you combine that with the 3 or so times 'Lil was getting up, I was NOT a happy person.

Ah, 'Lil.  Here's the story on her nights.

3 months ago she turned three.  This meant she had to transition to a preschool to continue to receive speech therapy.  Now, that was hard enough.  But then I realized that my grand plan of toilet training on her third birthday wasn't going to work so well (too many changes too fast).  So on a whim we did it the day after her IEP meeting.

And it worked . . . sort of.  She still won't go #2 in the right place, and was in diapers at night.

I felt that the diapers were being confusing for her, and that things would improve if I made her stay in underwear at night too.

Which started the waking. I think she had to go, but she would only SCREAM BLOODY MURDER if I put her on the toilet. So instead she would wander the house crying.  Or wet the bed two or three times.  We did this for a about 6 weeks.

Which made me even less willing to let Jake cry.


So I knew something had to change.   First thing I did was put 'Lil back in diapers at night.  I hate spending the money on more diapers, but I realized that $0.17 a night is probably cheaper than the entire load of laundry I did every day from her wetting the bed so much.

It took a week or two, but finally she was sleeping through the night again. And I slowly started working on Jellybean.

I finally started a real bedtime routine with him. I know, it sounds lazy, but I just had never bothered to do anything more but have him fall asleep while eating.  Then I started letting him cry at 10:00.  That didn't work so well for me. So I changed it to rocking him to sleep instead of eating.  After a few days he stopped waking up at 10:00 and I started trying it for his 12:00 waking.  I was still feeding him if he woke up after that, but I was down to only 3 times a night!

Then, over night, he stopped waking up.  For the last 4 nights, he's woken up at 4:30 for a small bottle (about 3 oz), and then back to sleep until 6:30.

I'm like a whole new person now.

(sorry this was such a long post, and most of you probably don't really care. But I wanted to remember what happened with this, and it really is just such a wonderful thing in my life!)