Our gentle sleep training (that seems to be working!)

Our gentle sleep training (that seems to be working!)

I read all the sleep books before baby was born. I knew you were supposed to put your baby down drowsy but asleep, and not too nurse or rock them to sleep.

But we had a Snoo, so baby slept pretty good regardless of what I did. I put her down, turned on the Snoo, and she was out.

Then it came time to graduate from the Snoo when she was six months old. I put her in the crib and she hated it immediately. I tried to put her in the crib first, and then subsequently swap her to the Snoo after first wakeup. This was a hell week of 8-10 wakeups per night, so I decided to rip off the band-aid and go full crib. How could it possibly be worse?

In order to get any sleep at all, I started nursing her to sleep and then sneaking her in the crib. Of course, this led to me having to nurse her about every hour all night long.

She got used to the crib, but we now had a sleep dependency and for six weeks I didn’t sleep more than two hours in a row.

One night, I finally put her down without nursing. She promptly lost her noodle. When I came back ten minutes later she was hoarse with snot on her forehead. My partner was horrified that I would let her cry. Chastened, I went back to nursing on demand.

I bought Taking Cara Babies but I got cold sweats just thinking about all the sobbing I’d have to endure. Even in the videos you can hear babies screaming in the background.

So here’s what I did.

I started reading a book with her after nursing her at night. She wants to fall asleep while nursing, but she perks up when I sit her up and read to her. I hold her and rock her till she’s sleepy, then put her in the crib.

The first night she stood up immediately and was pretty mad. I soothed her and laid her down. Rinse and repeat about ten times. By the end of the week she stood up once but then was fine being comforted on her back in the crib.

The next week, I focused on putting her down as awake as possible.

Now, it’s two weeks later. Last night, I put her down and she rolled over and went to sleep. These days, I don’t need to pick her back up, I can usually just lay her down and sing to her or shush her without taking her out of the crib.

Last night, she only woke me up twice, so I’m calling this a huge improvement.

We still have a ways to go for her to be able to put herself to sleep. I’m still rocking her. But I hope we’ll get there, little by little.