Our Sleep Sense Journey - Night 1

 

 

Grant went from waking up 1-2 times a night for a feeding, to waking up 5-6 times a night.  I'm not sure what exactly caused this change.  At 3 months he picked up an extra feed at night which I thought may have been from a growth spurt.  This didn't bother me too much because he would eat and go right back to sleep, and from start to finish only took about 30 minutes.  After he turned 4 months things just got crazy.  He used to sleep from 7p-1a without waking up, then wake up around 3 to eat again.  All of a sudden he was waking up at 10:30p, 1a, 3a, 5a and usually one or two other times in between there.  He would be crying and very upset and it was taking me up to 2 hours to get him back to sleep only to have him wake up again an hour later.

The peak of this nighttime disaster just happened to fall while David was working out of town for 2 weeks.  That meant to backup or break for me and I was going to work on about 4 hours of sleep broken up into 1-1.5 increments.  I was in a bad place. When you are exhausted at 3 am with a screaming baby and there is no one to give you a break you realize that something has to change.

The next day I started researching different sleep programs.  I'm not trying to get him to magically sleep through the night at only 5  months, but I did want to improve both of our sleep situations.  There was no way that he was waking up rested after waking up so many times and crying for so long.  I finally settled on the Sleep Sense program.  I'm going to try VERY hard to stick to the rules for 2 weeks and see how Grant does.  I plan on updating periodically with my results each night.

So with that being said...

Night 1 of the Sleep Sense Program:

6:40p - Bath

6:50p - PJs

6:55p - Bottle (only fed 2oz because he ate an hour earlier)

7:00p - Laid Grant in bed awake

7:00p-7:45p never cried, fussed a little and kicked his legs around a bit.  He would fall asleep then wake up for a little bit then fall asleep again.  By 7:45 he was completely asleep.

11:00p - woke up and started crying.  I went in the room and softly reassured him I was there and touched his face.  He cried for about 15 minutes and then calmed down and I put the pacifier back in and he went back to sleep.

1:00a-same thing as 11p, I think he may have cried 10-20 minutes, but eventually calmed down, took his paci and went back to sleep on his own.

3:00a - woke up and fussed for about 10 minutes and I decided to feed him.  He drank the bottle, burped and I laid him back down while still awake.  He never fussed or cried and fell asleep on his own in about 5-10 minutes.

6:15a - woke up for the day and was all smiles!

Now this may seem like a bad night because he still woke up 3 times, but let me just say that this is remarkable to me.  The previous 2 nights he woke up at least 5 times and it took me TWO HOURS to get him to fall back asleep after the 2a/3a wake up only for him to wake up again 1 hour later.  Last night was a complete success in my book! I am so surprised that he was able to soothe himself back to sleep so quickly after his bottle.  

Let's hope the following nights go just as smoothly! It felt amazing to get a 3 hour stretch of sleep again. :)

 I also need to note that he has still been sleeping swaddled and last night was also the first night I let him sleep with one arm out.  I thought that having a hand free would help him be able to self soothe.  He actually did really well  and didn't startle or thrash around.  Having that one arm out also seemed to please him enough that he didn't spend 15 minutes trying to break the other arm out of the swaddle. So success on both fronts! Maybe at the end of the two weeks he will be sleeping through the night swaddle free (too much to hope for?)