Last Friday, Michael and I found ourselves struggling to get Little Miss Lily to go to bed. Many of you know we have had some trouble getting our little girl to go to sleep on her own these past few months. We acknowledge that her sleep problems are mostly our own fault, as we have gotten her to rely on us bouncing her to sleep, preferably in a dark room with white noise blaring.
Ummm…oops.
It worked for us, though, and she usually let us bounce her until she was asleep, and then we can put her in her crib. About half the time she’d stay asleep, and half the time she’d pop right back up, demanding to be bounced again. This wasn’t a “decision” we made, to make our daughter reliant on bouncing to sleep, but it was something that evolved in the early weeks out of our desperation to do anything to get her to sleep so that we could catch 40…err…20 winks ourselves.
So on Friday night, we found ourselves bouncing a 4-month old bundle of cuteness (okay, so maybe she wasn’t looking quite so cute at midnight), putting her down, seeing her immediately open her eyes, hearing her immediately start fussing again, and repeating the cycle. For two hours. It was at that point, that we realized she was taking mini-cat naps while being bounced, and that we were finally doing more harm than good. Something had to give.
Now I had already read Richard Ferber’s (as in “Ferberizing”) “Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems,” and understood what our plan would be for letting her “cry it out” to fix these tedious sleep associations we had created. We had just planned on waiting a few more weeks to actually implement the plan. But Friday night, we finally decided to go ahead and implement the dreaded plan.
And I have to say, it went pretty well!
Night 1 (Friday), Lily cried for 39 minutes before falling asleep. We went in every few minutes (at increasingly long intervals) to reassure her we had not run off to Timbuktu without her, but we refused to bounce the stuffing out of her. It was a little bit rough, but we knew we were doing the right thing.
Night 2 (Saturday), Lily cried for 9 minutes before falling asleep. Much better!
Night 3, there was NO crying! Same for night 4! And now night 5! Yippee!!! Even naps are mostly fixed – she resists her late afternoon nap, but has only really cried before that nap once since we started the plan. This has been an incredible turnaround, and we couldn’t be more proud of our big girl.
The best part is that she has actually been in an even better mood than she usually is, and stays quietly in her crib until I come and get her.
Since no post is complete without video or pictures, her is what I wake up to in the mornings. Priceless!
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