Learning The Hard Way

I sit here typing this post very quietly. The babe is sleeping. Yay for us.

I don't want to jump the gun here, but the past two (yep, two!) nights we have started our form of sleep training...and so far, SO FAR it seems to be working! I know it's early, but we are feeling great about it. (Thanks to all of your for your responses to our HELP US post last week!)

After what we've been calling Cruz's "case of the Mondays" - which entails spending the entire day with Nick and I and being somewhat of a crabby boy all throughout the day, not napping well and being the biggest bear ever getting to bed...and then as if that isn't bad enough, waking up around 3am for a couple hours...we were ready for some change. And to take back the pants-wearing. No more being dictated by a whiny toddler.

On Tuesday night as we were in the middle of yet another struggle getting C to sleep, we decided we were just going to jump into our own "cry it out" method. After a bath, some book reading and some fussing - we laid little man down in his bed, kissed him good night, patted him on the back and then left the room and shut the door. That was 9:11pm. He cried. And he cried. And he cried some more. We made ourselves stay strong - and after much advice determined we needed to let him cry a little bit. This boy made that H.A.R.D.

He successfully cried, screamed, whined, you name it until 9:36pm and then he fell silent. Phew! Was he sleeping or did he just find something to occupy his time? We had to check - more out of fear that something happened. Quietly we opened the door (dangerous I know!) but saw that he was passed out in his crib. And he slept soundly all night long.

Fast forward to tonight...and we decided to try a similar method. No bath was needed, but after I got home from work, I stole a few minutes to play with him, changed his dipe and put him in PJs and then Nick took him to his rocker and read a couple books to him. I heard him shut the door and immediately the crying started. Not again. I don't know if I can listen to this poor boy each night.  Nick pointed out that it was exactly 9:11pm, which was exactly the same time we put him down last night. We decided that it would be a success if we shaved off five minutes from his prior night's crying episode.

Not only did we improve our time, but he fell asleep within 9 minutes! Major win for the parents here.I'm proud of him...and us for being strong and working toward a better schedule for all of us.

Let's just hope he makes it through the night....