Day 2 - The Sleep Project

Friday night we started the sleeping project. I bought Dr. Ferber's book "Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems." It's probably a good one to have. I just needed the Chapter on Sleep Associations, but it also talks about bedwetting, sleepwalking, nightmares, etc. Anyway, after doing the reading we have decided that the main reason Grace is having trouble sleeping is because of her pacifier. She uses it to go to sleep, but if it falls out in the middle of the night, she can't use it to go back to sleep so she cries and we have to help her. The only solution, since she can't keep it in her mouth all night is to teach her to sleep without the pacifier. So far we're only doing this at night and luckily she doesn't use the pacifier during the day unless she's sleepy, so I think once we break her of it at night, day will be pretty easy and then we won't run the risk of having a 2 year old that walks around with a pacifier in her mouth constantly.

Anyway, I followed the doctors advice and fed Grace around 7:30 p.m. after a bath. We put her down at about 7:45 p.m. and she fell asleep by 8:00. This was before I figured out we couldn't use the pacifier though, and I sat in her room until she fell asleep. Then as I continued to read, I figured out what I did wrong. She gave us a chance to correct it at about 8:30 p.m. when she woke up. Dr. Ferber suggests using a progressive waiting technique. The first night you wait 5 minutes, go check on the baby briefly (2 to 3 minutes max) and then leave while the baby is still awake. You then wait 10 minutes and check again, then 15 minutes, and then 15 minutes every additional time. If they wake again during the night, you start back at 5 and repeat until morning. Since we didn't give her the pacifier, it took Grace 45 minutes of crying to fall back asleep. She then woke up another 3 times during the night, but each time fell asleep in under 10 minutes (I did go check on her a couple of times, but never twice in the same waking). She woke up a 4th time at 4:20 a.m. and didn't fall back to sleep. I got up at 5:30 a.m. and started our day. Eric let me nap later Saturday morning.

Night 2 - Saturday night. I spent all afternoon on Saturday out shopping with Grace and Samara. I fed Grace at a little after 3 p.m., but she fell asleep while we were out and missed her 6:00 feeding. I got home just after 7:00 and held Grace off until I could quickly eat some Wendy's. Then I decided to feed her at about 7:15. She was hungry! She ate just over 7 ounces. Then we went upstairs, took a bath, got into her pj's. Daddy read her 3 stories and we looked at her pictures of Grandma's, Grandpa's and aunts and uncles. We layed her down at 8:15 p.m. and left the room. She cried. Day 2 progressive waiting times increase by 5 minutes. 10 minutes for the first wait, then 15, then 20. She fell asleep at 9:17 p.m. I left Eric with the monitor and went to bed at about 11:30 p.m. Eric came to bed at 2:30 a.m. and said she hadn't woke up yet. At around 4:00 a.m. I woke up and checked the volume setting on the monitor. At 5:30 a.m. I started wondering if she was breathing. I held off until 5:45 a.m., but then I quietly sneaked into her room and made sure she was still breathing. Yep, just asleep. I went back to bed and we heard the first cry at 6:10 a.m. Eric told me to wait 5 minutes. I did and she stopped crying after 1. At about 6:15 she started making awake happy noises. I got up to get her and was greeted with a smiling well rested baby that just slept through the night!

I'm not saying we're completely done with the night wakings, but I have a feeling we're pretty close. Yeah! Finally, some sleep. Ok, I need to finish getting us ready for church now.