So, maybe I’m lying.  I really do like sleep.  And we haven’t been getting much for almost two months now and it’s progressively getting worse.  I’ve tried everything (or at least I feel like we have).  At first I tried to believe that she was having a growth spurt and woke up because she was hungry.  I’ve tried feeding Annabelle cereal and pureed baby food for dinner to help and I’ve tried feeding her half breastmilk and half formula at bedtime.  I’ve tried giving her more milk than she probably needs.  All with the idea that she’s waking up hungry and I need to “fill her up” before she goes to bed.  All it did was increase the number of dirty diaper I had to change in the middle of the night (and I believe add to the reason she was waking up–wether that’s true or not I’m not sure).  I’ve made sure she’s warm enough with the idea that she’s too cold.  I’ve tried putting her to bed earlier.  And putting her to bed later.  I’ve tried getting her to take a pacifier because it would help soothe her.  She wants nothing to do with any and all pacifiers. I’ve tried going with it and “accepting” that Annabelle is going to wake up.

I am no parenting expert. I do tons of things wrong and make decisions I am unsure of all the time.  I know all babies wake up in the middle of the night and I don’t expect Annabelle to sleep through the night.  I know as she gets older she’ll change and sleeping will be fantastic at times and then she’ll regress but having her wake up every 1.5 hours to 3 hours every night and being the only one that’s able to comfort her is not good for anyone in our household.  And every morning, when I’m exhausted I wonder if I should be doing something different.  When Annabelle’s 9-months old and still not sleeping I don’t want to finally do something and after it works regret not trying something sooner.

Maybe three months or so ago a friend of mine, who has a little boy a few months older than Annabelle said, “It looks like I’m going to have to start doing some sleep training soon.”  Of course, at the time Annabelle was a great little sleeper and would only wake up once to nurse.  I thought I was lucky or Annabelle was naturally awesome and wouldn’t need to worry about this so called sleep training thing.  And now it’s time for some so called sleep training. Otherwise I will need to fix that hole in air mattress and sleep next to her. Using the best fan for white noise available online I was able to create an atmosphere which helped me and Annabelle get a perfect sleep all night.

After doing some research I found out that there isn’t one method to sleep training.  But essentially what you’re trying to do is get your infant to learn how to soothe themselves and sleep through the night.  What we planned on doing was when Annabelle woke up after initially falling asleep was to go into her nursery, make sure her diaper wasn’t dirty or something was wrong, then if all was okay, cover her up, pat and rub her back, talk to her for a minute and then leave. If she was still crying after 10 minutes, one of us would go in and go through the process again.  You can also call this a version of the “cry it out” method.  It sounds so evil and might be the reason I was so skeptical about trying it for so long.

So, the first night we did it she woke up an hour and a half after falling asleep.  I went through the routine and she cried for almost an hour and finally fell back asleep.  Then she slept over four hours (it was wonderful).  I had to work the next day so when she woke up I retreated back to my old ways for the rest of the night and she woke up a couple more times.

The following night we tried it all again. She slept four hours after falling asleep.  When she woke up we went through the routine and she went back to sleep in less than 10 minutes.  She slept for another four hours.  She needed her diaper changed when she woke up so I changed her and nursed her in the nursery, then put her back to bed.  She slept until 6am.  It was a good night!

And then the following night wasn’t as good. She went down at 7pm. Woke up at 11pm. We soothed her and she went back down just fine.  She woke up at 1am and needed her diaper changed. I changed her, fed her and put her down again.  Then she woke up at 3am.  I tried soothing her for almost an hour with no success and felt so bad that I finally nursed her and she went right down.  She woke up at 7am.

This all happened about two weeks ago.  Since then most nights she’s waking up just two times which I’m happy with.  On Friday night Annabelle woke up just once and it was amazing!  I was hoping for it to happen again but it did not.  At least I know it’s possible though.

I’m still not sure if we’re doing it “right” but I’m feeling better when I wake up in the morning and Annabelle doesn’t seem to hate us so I think that’s a positive.  I’ll keep you updated on how things continue.