I'm scared to write this post for fear it will all come crumbling down. My baby has been sleeping! For more than 2 hours! In my quest to find answers, I came across a lot of questions about sleep but no one ever updated with their results and what did/didn't work. I found the blog, Troublesome Tots to be really helpful. I especially enjoyed her series, "What You Need to Know About Sleeping Through the Night" Alexis, the woman behind the blog, did a video chat on Google+ that I attended where she answered tons of sleep questions, it was informative and I learned so much about babies and sleep. I also learned that I was NOT alone.
I knew that Weston's pacifier had to go as it was a negative sleep association for him and causing him to wake-up constantly when it would fall out of his mouth. A lot of people told me to wait it out, soon he'd be able to hold it in better but I knew it was more of a problem than useful tool, for Weston. All babies are different and not everyone has the pacifier problem. On August 1st, we quit the pacifier cold turkey starting with naps. Of course this meant there would be crying but my husband and I took turns laying next to Weston and comforting him during his naps until he'd fall asleep sans pacifier. The first day, naps were very, very short. He never cried/fussed for very long, maybe 15 minutes at the most. That night, he went to bed fairly easily without it, I was shocked. It took about a week for him to not even fuss at all, we were sure to give him plenty of sleep cues (turn on white noise, zip him in his sleep suit, tell him goodnight, lay him in his crib and give him a soothie) and eventually we didn't have to lay next to him at all. This has been the biggest and best improvement. Now when I'm at my mom's and he has to nap in the PNP, I can do his little routine, lay him down and walk away...he'll fall asleep on his own! It makes traveling with him so much easier. It's also nice that I'm not a distracted driver, reaching back behind me to give him a paci in his car seat so he'll sleep. I was doing that one day and I rear ended my husband's truck. That's actually the push I needed to see that I needed to make changes. I kept doing the same thing with Weston and expecting to get a different sleep result.
So now that he was able to fall asleep on his own I had to fix the other problem: getting him to stay asleep. I had no idea how to do that. I wasn't comfortable with night weaning at his age even though I knew most of his awakenings were not due to hunger. I was feeding him because it's an easy way to get him back to sleep and involves no crying. To be honest with you, I was tired of having my boob in his mouth all.night.long. It was an uncomfortable way for me to sleep, I was unhappy and wanted it to change. After a really terrible night, I emailed Alexis from Troublesome Tots...I didn't think she'd answer me but it was worth a shot. Two days later I was completely floored to have an email from her! She told me that the reason I was getting a longish stretch of sleep early in the night (think 2.5, 3 hours) was because once Weston was caught up on a bit of sleep debt, he wanted to suck or worse, would be wide awake. She said he still had a huge "suck = sleep" association and I solved 50% of the problem by removing the paci. She told me that all I needed to do was separate nursing from bedtime by 20 minutes and that usually takes care of the issue and give it 3 days. Well. Wouldn't you know, it WORKED. The first night he slept 6 hours, the second night 6 hours and 15 minutes and it has gradually increased each night. Last night: 8 stinkin' hours! He has never slept 8 hours, ever. And after he ate, he went back down for a few more hours. It was GLORIOUS.
It is so weird to change his diaper in the morning and it doesn't weigh 900lbs from him nursing all night long. I feel more rested than I have in months, I am so much happier. I feel like there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I can now stay up a little later and spend time with my husband, knowing that I can depend on Wes to give me a couple hours of solid sleep. That was all I wanted. I know it won't always be this great once teething and other milestones hit but I'm going to savor every minute of it because I've dealt with no sleep for so long, I'm allowed to enjoy this, to jump up and down and scream from the rooftop.
So now I nurse him as the start of the bedtime routine. I nurse, we play for a bit (5-10 minutes) or read a story then daddy does bath, lotion, diaper, jammies, sleep suit, white noise and lays him in his crib as the final step. He goes down without a peep. I'm thrilled Weston is getting more solid REM sleep and I'm not sure if it's been a result of his better night sleep or what but he's also napping longer during the day. This is great for me because it means I get a bit of a break. He was always a cat napper and I couldn't get much done during his naps. It also means that I can nap too! The past two days I was able to get a 30 minute nap in. I feel so much happier since catching up on my extreme sleep debt.
I'm thankful I took action now and helped Weston master the tools to go to sleep and stay asleep on his own. I always said that I would never sleep train and now, here I am. I sleep trained and it was the best decision I could have ever made. It's also possible to sleep train without doing cry-it-out, I'm proof of that. If you are struggling with a baby who won't sleep, I'd highly recommend checking out Alexis's blog! She's a super hero!
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