101--Sunday

Sleep Training Day 1

All day today I steeled myself for what I anticipated would be the hardest night of my life--listening to my sweet boy wailing and moaning in distress into the wee hours of the night.

By the time your night-night nursing came around, I was as jittery as a toddler at Halloween. I nursed you at 6pm and you fell dead asleep on the boob, as usual. But I took a deep breath, jiggled you until your little eyes opened, and then put you down in your crib tummy down.

You started fussing and turning your head from side to side, and I thought, "Here it comes..." But after a few seconds you just fell asleep. Very anti-climactic.

We decided you could only eat every 4 hours (and then later, we'd lengthen it gradually to every 5) so I waited eagerly to see if you'd make it to 10pm without waking up. And you did! You woke up at 11:15 and I fed you right away, jiggled you awake, and then put you down again.

You slept easily again, but then woke up at 12:40am crying hard. I thought, "This is it! Here we go!" You wailed and screamed and sounded so baleful and angry while your dad checked in on you at regular intervals. I tried to sleep with earplugs and really loud white noise, but it was impossible to ignore you and wonder how you were doing.

And then, magically, around 1:00am you were quiet. I nudged your dad and said, "He's quiet!" You were sound asleep and didn't wake up again until 3:40am, your next feeding time. And then you didn't wake up until 7am.

I, sadly, didn't sleep at all--I was so jazzed and wired about the whole thing.

Thoughts--So, you only cried 20 minutes during your first night of sleep-training. I'm kind of disappointed. I expected at least an hour of heavy sobbing and maybe a little vomit. Oh well. Although things could be considered to have gone well, I really don't think we're out of the woods yet. I think you just had one of your really good sleepy nights and it isn't representative of what you're going to do on average.

The real hard training is going to be during the day for your naps. You're not a good napper and you've NEVER napped without motion and a lot of assistance--either swinging or bouncing. I'm afraid you're going to skip all your naps today, crying through each one. Gulp.