Sleeping through the night?

I doubt we are the only parents who wondered, are we ever going to sleep through the night again?



I have no idea how hubby mustered up this smile.  This was taken about 3 months after Caleb arrived.  Those 3 months were mainly filled with screaming and crying (sometimes the baby too).  This is the point in life when I started drinking coffee, lots and lots and lots of it.  Poor guy was colicky, and had some issues nursing.

I felt bad for the little one, but I also had no idea how to continue life with less than 2 hours of sleep a day.  After discussing with (whining to) some of my mom friends, a good friend suggested I try sleep training.  I will be forever grateful.

In the next few days, I read the “sleepeasy solution” (see .  We got his room ready, darkening windows, got a noise machine, and worked like crazy to get this boy to 14lbs, the minimum weight requirement to sleep train, which took another two months.  (We make little babies).

We began his first sleep training day just as we would normally, but we kept him awake and busy until his first nap.  Then we zipped him in his sleep sack, gave him a kiss, and closed the door.  We have a video monitor, so we watched him closely from another room.  The first couple naps did not go well.  He yelled and cried a lot, but we went in every few minutes and told him we loved him.  We also found it challenging to keep him awake between naps, he wanted to sleep in our arms so desperately.  This was a rough day for everyone, and involved buckets of fancy ice cream.


By the evening, he was pooped, and fell asleep quite quickly.  He woke up a few times, never cried as long as 5 minutes, although each episode felt like an hour.  In the morning, little man was just happy as can be to see us.


Each consecutive day, we found that he fell asleep faster and stayed asleep longer.  By the third night, he slept the whole night through, right until the morning.  The fourth day, he slept easily during all of his naps.  By the end of the week, he was a new baby.  He was so happy!

Fast forward to 3 years old.  This little guy still sleeps just under 12 hours at night, and naps for 2 hours most afternoons.  This isn’t to say we don’t have challenges, but we are confident that we have most nights available for time together as a couple.

Our second baby, was much easier to sleep train.  We tried to keep her to a similar routine as Caleb from birth, with lots of flexibility.  So the day she was heavy enough to sleep train, we simply moved her to her own room, she cried once or twice for a couple minutes, and has been a champion sleeper ever since.



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