Bedtime Equals Crib Time

I’ve been dreading it, putting it off for weeks with every excuse I could think of. I’ve read the horror stories. I knew it would be bad, our hardest endeavor yet as parents.

But this week, we decided to bite the bullet. After all, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

So it began…the greatly feared sleep training, also known as Letting Baby Cry It Out.

Letting Baby Cry It Out was going to be extra difficult for several reasons:
• Owen has strong lungs. VERY strong lungs. Being a big, healthy baby with a lot of energy from a lot of milk, he can sustain crying for long periods of time. I wish I had his endurance during a workout…I’d be running marathons every week with that kind of stamina.
• Owen has never been a great sleeper. Being the extraordinarily hungry little man that he is, he likes to eat every couple of hours, all day and all night long. We were able to deal with this for so long because Owen, although not a sleepy baby, is not a fussy baby. He gets up to eat but goes back to sleep easily with a full stomach. The only problem is that his stomach isn’t full for long.
• Since Owen eats so frequently, it wasn’t long after we brought him home from the hospital that we realized it was much easier for Owen to sleep in the cradle next to our bed. Mistake #1.
• Once the warm nights of summer passed and the evenings got chilly, Owen slept less and less in his cradle and more and more in our cozy bed with us. Mistake #2.

By November, we were in quite the pickle, regressing rather than progressing. Owen would pretty much only sleep with us in our bed and, being so close to me, he wanted to eat more often than ever (he can’t resist temptation staring him in the face).

Thus, we had no choice but to teach Owen to sleep in his own crib in his nursery.

Letting Baby Cry It Out is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. It’s absolutely excruciating listening to your baby cry and not being able to pick him up and comfort him.

The first night was by far the worst night. We made a couple big mistakes. We tried to put him down while he was asleep, which only led to him waking up within moments in a panic. Then we eventually gave in and picked him up, rocking him back to sleep and going through the vicious cycle all night long.

We learned our lesson by the second night. We established a bedtime routine and put Owen in the crib BEFORE he fell asleep. We designated time intervals for crying, going in to comfort him (but not pick him up) after a specified number of minutes had passed and leaving the room before he fell back to sleep. Richard was the “comforter” because we theorized that it was best for Owen not to see me and my boobs and think of eating. Out of sight, out of mind.

That second night was a major improvement. There was a lot of crying, but also a lot of sleeping. Every night since has gotten better. He still cries, making himself a sweaty mess, for about an hour after we first put him down in his crib. But he sleeps for long stretches without waking for a meal. Last night he slept for over 7 hours straight! And he wakes up refreshed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

One thing I wasn’t expecting with this whole sleep training thing was that I would also need to learn how to sleep without Owen. Every night I feel like I’m suffering from separation anxiety. I can’t stand listening to him cry…so I cry too. Once he finally drifts off to sleep, I spend hours feeling tense, certain that he’ll begin screaming again at any moment. Then, instead of worrying that he’ll wake up, I begin to worry that something is wrong. Why’s he being so quiet?? Is he still in there? Is he breathing? All of this has resulted in one very tired mother and a husband who thinks she’s insane.

Nevertheless, the long nights are worth it because I get to spend my days with this:

And this: