Dreaded Sleep Training = Great Results!

People often ask me "Does Charlie ever cry?!" because he is such a happy baby with a calm disposition. My response is generally "not really :-) " but I was keeping a secret...
Around 9 months Charlie's sleeping habits flew off the handle and he was waking every few hours. By 10 months it was about every 2 hours. This night waking was really starting put me out. Ryan could do nothing for Charlie. All he wanted was the boob. Is that so bad? Well it was because this was a game little Charlie was playing on us. Something had to be done. We had to sleep train him. We tried the check and console method and that didn't work. He knew I would give in and nurse him, but then he wouldn't go back to sleep. This wasn't working, so I enlisted the help of Dr. Marc Weissbluth of Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child. A difficult read I must say. All I wanted to know was HOW TO GET MY BABY TO SLEEP! I bought this book on my Kindle and gave up reading it page by page and used the search tab to find Charlie's age and came upon the Extinction method.

This is a no nonsense, cut throat method of sleep training. You basically have to ignore your child :-( It's awful, but "they" say it works wonders and everyone benefits especially baby. If you don't train your baby to get a full nights rest they can have issues all their lives. Blah, blah, blah...a bit dramatic, but lets not take any chances. We needed to know he is not crying because he's hurt, it is merely a way for him to gain our attention, and in doing so it can become a game to baby (which it did).
Here's what happened...


Night 1: * Note - Charlie's crib is in our room.
6:30 - Bedtime routine
7:15 - In bed and cried until 7:30
11:45 - Woke up crying until 12:10 when he fell asleep...or so I thought. I was stiff as a board in my bed letting him cry, pulling for him thinking "there are like 3 pacifiers in there baby" and "you can do it!" When he stopped crying I got up to check on him and cover him with the blanket and he popped up! Ah! I didn't know what to do. So I panicked and layed flat on the ground, but he saw me. I just got up tried briefly to give him a paci and bolted out of there. Ugh. This sucks. Is this right? All I can think is would baby Jesus accept this method of parenting (it's midnight folks and I'm sleep deprived)?
12:30 - still crying. I'm such a jerk. 12:40...still crying...still a jerk. 12:50...still crying and now I am think how badly I want to hold him and make it all better. 1:00 sound asleep and still alive. Oh wait! 1:45 - he's up again and there is NO way I can let him go any more so call me selfish I pick that sweet baby up and nurse him back to sleep. I may have failed at the extinction method, but not as a mom. It felt so good to hold him and he hugged me right back.
4:45 - Up again, but I didn't move and he squeaked for about 2 minutes then went back down.
6:00 - I nursed him and put him down (he could genuinely be hungry), but of course that didn't work. He was wide awake. I let him snooze in bed for a bit, which for him is rolling around trying to get to Ryan. Checked my clock, 6:45 already, well that's a reasonable hour to be up.

Night 2: * Note - We kicked that kid out! We moved his crib into my office upstairs.
Charlie slept from 8:00pm until 4:45am!!! I heard him cry at 4:45 so I went in, then he stopped, but the cat was trapped in the room with him so I had to open the door. He popped up quietly. I knew he'd be hungry so I nursed him and he went right back to sleep. He didn't wake up until 8:00am. So was it  it was the extinction method that worked? Was it was because he was in a room if his own? Or was it was because Charlie ate the most food ever in one sitting of short ribs with noodles and green beans followed by a cherry cheesecake oatmeal dessert at my folks? All three I think :-)
* Another note - Charlie fell asleep in the car on the way home, so no bedtime routine.

Night 3: * Note - Charlie moved yet another time downstairs into his own room (we switched around all of the rooms...post on that soon!)
6:30 - Bedtime routine.
7:00 - Out like a light. No fussing, fighting, or popping up.
5:00am - Woke up and I nursed him. He slept until 8:00!!

Night 4:
8:00 - Bedtime routine.
6:00 am - I went and nursed and back to sleep he went!

I think I can safely say we are out of the woods. Thank God. Now I will have to sleep train myself back to sleeping through the night ;-)

Book Review: So the Extinction Method worked for us and many others. It may be the hardest night you'll ever have, but the reward is so great and so needed. Something else we learned from the book is that babies are often overtired causing their sleep to be shorter and night wakings to occur. There is a magical time he speaks of where the will be no fussing when put down and that time will probably change from night to night depending on the naps they took. And if they to go to bed earlier they can sleep longer. Well he was right about that, he was right about all of it. Getting my child to sleep was worth the $12, but hopefully this will help and you won't have to. Good luck!