One More Time, with Feeling

Well, so much for not Ferberizing. Turns out we sort of ended up doing it in the middle of the night last night, after Baby J had gotten up for his second feeding but wouldn't go back to sleep on his own. I put the blanket down on the floor of his room and was okay with the idea of lying with him and patting him back to sleep, but he decided he wanted to crawl (well, army crawl) around the room, which I was NOT okay with. Not at 3:30 in the morning. So I put him in his crib, where he cried and cried and cried and I ended up giving my husband the monitor and putting in earplugs. Not that I couldn't hear him through the earplugs, but they just helped to dull it a bit. After about a half hour he did go to sleep on his own, and slept till about 7.

So this afternoon at naptime I figured I had better not "reinforce negative sleep associations" as Dr. Ferber would say, so I made him take a nap on his own instead of with me, as we usually do on weekends and my days off. It was so weird to take a nap in the bed by myself. After about ten minutes of unhappiness, Baby J did go to sleep and napped well (at least an hour, which is really good for him). Then we got up and went to the park and he didn't seem to remember how mad he was at me when I was trying to make him fall asleep on his own.

So I figured, we'd better keep with the trend tonight at bedtime, just to make sure we're not undoing any of the hard work done over the past 24 hours. I tried to wait until he was REALLY tired and seemed ready for bed, and put him in his crib. He cried for about a half hour, and I went in every 10 minutes to check on him, and finally, right as I was going to check on him for the fourth time (leading into the 4th ten-minute span), he fell asleep. I hope this makes a difference in his night wakings. If he wakes up to feed, I will still feed him. And then I will put him right down, and if he cries about that, then we'll have to go with the intervals again. But hopefully this new way of falling asleep at night will help make a difference so that he can go back to sleep without feeding when he wakes up overnight. I sure hope so, because this is NOT EASY. In fact, it sucks sucks sucks. I hope he doesn't hate me now.