Sleeping through the night

Connor began sleeping through the night at eight weeks old. Sadly, at six months (once he stopped going to daycare and subsequently stopped having a bottle shoved in his mouth at every sign of discontent) he began waking up several times through the night to nurse.

Naturally this was incredibly frustrating for new parents. Why on earth would this be happening? Chris did a little research on it and he came up with this very helpful article: http://www.askmoxie.org/2006/02/qa_what_are_sle.html and http://sparkplugdance.org/information/articles/great-stuff-happens/ (linked from the first).

Once we understood why Connor had suddenly stopped sleeping contentedly through the night, it began to get better. He didn’t start sleeping through the night again, but just understanding why it happened made it that much easier to deal with.

Since then we coslept. It worked for us (and I’m a big advocate of doing what works for your family) and enabled me to get the most possible sleep, because nursing was so much easier to do lying down as opposed to sitting up and waking up.

Well, Connor is now almost 15 months old and the other day Summer and Kenny came over to play. For those not in the know, Summer is expecting again and due quite soon. Her and her hubby were cosleeping with Kenny too, but they began transitioning Kenny to a crib in preparation for the new baby. Just as she was leaving, we began discussing the transition. You might say that I was insanely jealous that it was so easy for them!

I made the executive decision to begin transitioning Connor immediately, and Chris went to work at getting Connor’s crib emptied and his mattress put back in (Connor napped and began each night on his own mattress, but would crawl into bed with us as soon as we went in there, and wake whenever we moved, which led me to believe that he would sleep better in a room without so many noises and movements…).

I’m not going to say it was easy and I’m not going to say there were no tears involved, but we did it. That night we got Connor in jammies, read him a book, and he nursed, then we headed into his room. He began crying as soon as he felt the descent into his crib. We tried everything, stroking his cheek, rubbing his back, sitting with my hand on him, but nothing worked. Finally I just decided to sit in the dark with him, but he would cry, then stop, but then start again. It was tragic, tears flowed on all fronts. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, I was adamant to NOT cry-it-out, but here my sweet boy was lying in his crib, crying his eyes out even with me right next to him!

I was desperate. Finally I said to Chris we should just leave the room for only a minute and see what happens. We said our “good nights” and “i love yous” and both left and crawed into our bed, hid under the covers, and bawled.

Then it happened. Connor was crying but suddenly…silence. I peeked at the clock. Less than three minutes had passed.

“What happened?” I asked Chris.

“I think…he fell asleep!” he responded incredulously.

We snuck quietly back to Connor’s room and sure enough, he was cuddled with his Cappy (Very Hungry Caterpillar stuffed toy) and snuggled under his blanket, fast asleep.The best part? He didn’t wake up until 5am. His first night in his crib he slept about 7 hours.

The next day I dreaded naptime but I followed a similar routine and again, he was out in less than 3 minutes.

It has been over a week and he’s gone to sleep easier and easier every night and slept for longer. Only twice has he woken up between 8 and 5am, and for most of the nights he sleeps from 8 to 8am. Naps are going even easier, there is usually less than a minute of crying and he sleeps from 2 to 3 hours.

I will never regret waiting this long in order to make sure my happy boy didn’t have to ever cry it out.

~Jaci