Sleep Training

With the date looming of my inevitable return to work, Roland and I thought it was about time to see if we could get Rosalie to sleep through the night. Rosalie has been a pretty good sleeper for the most part. Some of this I give credit to her time spent in NICU, where it was always noisy, and so she basically transferred the ability to sleep with a bit of noise to home. Occassionally, she would let me have a full 8 hours of sleep without waking me up, but those were few and far between (but greatly appriciated though!!). Even when she did wake me up in the night, I really did not have an issue with getting up with her twice a night. I've read that the constant waking up and not getting enough REM sleep can contribute to postpartum depression and resentment towards your spouse or baby, but I was lucky enough to not have that problem. On the very few occassions where she would not go back to sleep and would scream like a Banshee, I would wake up Roland when I was at the end of my rope and he would take a turn at trying to get her to sleep. The fact that he never complained about this helped me not want want to murder him in his sleep ;)

So when we decided to change up the routine to get her to sleep through the night, I thought we would have to make some BIG changes. A friend of mine had had some great success with a method called The Sleep Sense Program (http://www.sleepsense.net/), with her son that is only 3 days older than Rosalie. She started it WAY before I had even considered trying to get Rose to sleep through the night and he was really good with it.  My friend had given me a bit of a description and the method and I figured we would give it a go.

I honestly think it was a greater adjustment for me than it was for Rosalie. One of the parenting philosophies I had based my parenting style on was that babies cry for a reason. They are not trying to manipulate you or get you to do whatever they want. They cry when they NEED something. They WHINE when they want something. So when this method required your child to cry quite a bit, I was skeptical. But once I had read her theory as to the reason that they cry, I was all for it. She explains that when babies are tired (and show all those signs: rubbing eyes, yawning, pulling at their ears...) and you put them in their cribs, they cry because they are tired and YOU haven't put them to sleep. They are trying to tell YOU that they need you to rock them, or nurse them, or sing to them, or do whatever it is you have done since they were born to get them to fall asleep. They have not learned to put themselves to sleep yet, because thus far in their lives, YOU have been their strategy to fall asleep. And with this program, it's not like you are throwing them in their crib and then ditching them. You establish a routine so that they know it's bedtime, and if you want you can stay in the room, so you don't feel like you are abandoning them, that is totally OK. I didn't because I was more of a distraction to Rosalie, so it didn't work for us. The first night when I tried to stay in the room, she kept standing up in her crib and reaching for me, so I scooted my chair over so I could rub her back (totally OK according to the book), and she just clung at me over the side of the crib and cried with her head on my shoulder. Most pitiful baby ever. So I couldn't stay after that. I wasn't helping her at all.

I don't want to say too much about the program, because I don't want to get sued or something, but it totally worked... in conjunction with this little genius contraption...

I don't know what this thing is called, I don't know how much it costs, but it is an awesome invention. I bought her crib off of Kijiji and the guy left this thing on it, and it's kind of a pain to take off, so I understand why he left it. But thanks to him and thanks to Baby Einstein!!

This is fish thing is Rosalie's method of putting herself to sleep. We've used this as a nightlight and part of our bedtime routine since she "outgrew" her sleep sheep (he was great for the heartbeat, and for the waves for a while, but then it just stopped working for her). I would turn this on right before I fed her her last feed before bedtime, then put her in her crib while it was still playing. It lights up, plays music and the little fishies rotate around it. It turns off after about 25 minutes of being on (it progressively gets quieter and less entertaining as time goes on). SO now, when I put Rosalie down for a nap, she cries for a bit (I think this is because of a mixture of not wanting to nap, and not being asleep already) then she smacks that big blue button on the front to turn it on, and then she's out cold within a matter of minutes.

Just so you can see how much light it throws out. The light on the wall is peeking through the curtains, but the light on the crib is from the fish thingy. Not too bright to keep her awake. 

I have a feeling that rather than a blanket or a stuffed toy, this contraption may be transferred from her crib to her toddler bed, then her toddler bed to a real bed, then from that bed to her collage dorm. Whatever works! Right? ;)