Here We Go Again (Argh)

Well, it was bound to happen again.

Every few months Judah's sleeping habits devolve to the point where frankly, I JUST CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! And the ugly specter of sleep-training once again rears its wailing head.

This time Judah's learned to pull himself to standing in his crib. At first we were afraid our poor guy didn't know how to lay back down, so we would go to him, lay him down and pat his back. But then he decided he needed to pop up again and again, instead of staying down while we patted his back. He became a giant Mexican jumping bean--we'd lay him down, he'd pop up, we'd lay him down, he'd pop up--occasionally he wanted us to pick him up and then put him in his crib and then pick him up again and then put him back in his crib...

You get the picture. This is not cute during the day and it is infinitely more not cute at 2am, 4am, 5am, and 6am each night. After a week of these shenanigans, we finally decided we couldn't continue to live like this. And Judah was getting awfully sleep-deprived as well by our lack of 'boundaries'. 

But it's one thing to sleep-train a 6 month old baby. It's another thing entirely to train a toddler. Judah's so much older now and he can yell (boy can he yell) so much louder and make heartbreaking sounds like (maaaa-maaaaa!). And he could really hurt himself throwing himself against his crib bars.

But honestly, we felt like there was no other solution than to have him cry his eyes out on his own. So yesterday, we took a deep breath, put him in his crib, told him to lie down and go to sleep, and *gulp* shut the door behind us! (Well, technically we left it open a crack so we could sneak peeks at him).

Much to our amazement and infinite relief, he yelled with great fury and zeal for about 30 minutes and then collapsed to sleep in his crib. Phew!  He did have more crying jags during the night, but he settled himself down within 5 minutes or so each time.

This morning I told the Spouse that Judah seemed kinda sad when he woke up. Spouse is afraid we "killed his spirit". Well, if by "spirit" Spouse means Judah's motivation to yell at the top of his lungs until he gets what he wants, I think I'm kinda okay with that.