Sleep Training: Yay or Nay?

I’ll be the first to admit that I am a softy. I am a total pushover when it comes to sleep with my babes. I want them to sleep and I’ve been blessed with decent sleepers… but I’ve never really had the baby that magically sleeps through the night without any prodding. I’m grateful that they sleep pretty well, but at the same time, it has made it hard for me to feel desperate enough to sleep train them.

With having triplets first, we hit a breaking point where I just had to sleep train them and couldn’t comfort every cry and need because I only had so many hands. We did several days of crying it out and while it was miserable and difficult at the time, we survived and they became amazing sleepers. My only regret with them was that it took me so long to hit my breaking point that sleep training almost got harder because by that point, the triplets could pull themselves to stand in their beds and would often stand up and cry or even fall asleep leaning on the side of their crib. Talk about pulling at my heart strings!

With my first singleton, Felicity… I never felt the need to sleep train because she was just one baby… and it wasn’t ever that point of desperation like I had with the triplets. So with her, I never really pushed her and she would nurse back to sleep as needed and we made it through. She was such a happy baby I didn’t want to miss any of those snuggle times or needs for mama.

Next was my twins… I would say this was more of a hybrid approach. I didn’t have it in me to full on cry it out… there were two of them, and I had two hands, so I felt like there were many times that I would just sit with them in the chair and snuggle with them until they fell asleep. I had a hard time pushing them because they were so cute and sweet and I was tired, but not THAT tired. Then I hit the point where they started rolling and moving and crawling and I remembered how tough that was with the triplets and how much it prolonged the process and just felt like I had missed the window. It was too late, so I just didn’t push forward with strict sleep training.

So let’s come back to the present. Here I am, with another singleton baby. I feel so far from my “breaking” point but also am remembering all of my challenges of waiting until that breaking point. When I waited, it became that much harder to sleep train because I was so tired and emotional that it was hard to think with a clear and logical mind! When I waited, baby had way more skills that made it more difficult for them to just lay down and self-soothe. Yesterday somehow I decided that it was “the day” to start and here we are, one full day into sleep training and here is a diary of my experience:

Day 1:

7:00 am: Babe woke up

9:05 am: Nap #1. Babe fussed on and off for about 20 minutes to finally fall asleep on her own. This is new for her but she made it and slept soundly once she finally fell asleep! I tried the Ferber method and set a timer for 5 minutes, went in and soothed her without picking her up and then left again, set another timer for 10 minutes this time and same thing, went back and shushed her and put a hand on her and then left again. I didn’t have to go back a third time as she fell asleep after that. She was finally asleep around 9:25 am and then slept until I had to wake her at 11:20 am to run an errand.

1:10 pm: Nap #2. Babe fussed for about 15 minutes before falling asleep on her own. She had more of an idea this time of what was going on and it was definitely less fussing than her first nap but still a bit. I didn’t go in at all this time because the fussing was so inconsistent that every time I got to the door she was quiet. Babe finally fell deep asleep by 1:30ish and then slept for about an hour and half until she woke up happily.

5:20 pm: Nap #3. This was a quick car nap on my way to a dinner. Babe fell asleep in the car ride and snoozed for about 35 minutes on our way into dinner. The perfect little cat nap to get her through!

8:00 pm: Bedtime. Babe was not as thrilled about bedtime as her naps… I could tell she was tired, but she really wanted to nurse herself to sleep and snuggle. In her last feeding she started to doze off so I took her off and snuggled her, sang her a song and put her into bed before shutting off the lights. It took her a true hour to fully settle. I went in twice, with Ferber method intervals and shushed her to calm her down and she would self soothe a bit, sucking on her hand and even at times looked like she had fallen asleep but then abruptly wake and fuss again. She calmed herself down and then fell into a very deep sleep by 9 pm.

2:35 am: Night feeding. Babe woke up and babbled for a little bit but then started crying. I decided to feed her since when I had worked with a sleep consultant years ago with my triplets, she had suggested having “ok to feed windows” when trying to initially sleep train. So if baby wakes up before 2 am, then it’s still not time to eat and babe needs to settle herself… but if it’s past 2 am (or whatever time you set), then she can eat and be put back to sleep. I fed her, and then burped her and set her back in bed. Usually when I do this, she is already asleep when I set her down, but this time she actually had her eyes open and looked around for a little bit before falling asleep without a peep.

7:00 am: Woke baby. Had to wake up babe today because she was still dead asleep when it was time to get everyone ready and out the door. She was the happiest baby you have ever seen to wake up!

Waking up with this smile made me feel like we are on the right track. Thank you babe for this little nod of reassurance. Baby is happier with better sleep and so is mom. All in all, I’ve taken a different approach with all of my kids and they have all slept eventually and it’s all worked out. So my real take is, you do what is right for you! But if you need to hear what someone else is doing or how it’s going, I’ll keep sharing my experience this time around.

If you decide to sleep train, good luck! If you decide to just snuggle that babe and let it roll, enjoy it! You do you!

xo,

Betsy