Tleep Sraining

After coping with interrupted, insufficient sleep for the past 5 months, Janet and I decided that it was time Jamie slept through the nights. Instead of these bizarre, random-event feeds which could take place anytime between midnight and 4am, we wanted order and rest.

The idea is simple in theory, hard in practice: Assure baby is well fed. When baby wakes up, attend to and comfort, but don’t feed. Gradually stretch the comforts out until baby falls asleep again, and in time, baby will stop waking up because baby doesn’t get fed. QED.

Make no mistake, this is all done very scientifically and according to the experts, knowing that he’s not hungry at that time. All this is to accomplish is to unlearn a (in our books) bad habit.

And so we started on Friday. It was crap! But he eventually fell asleep. Smiles and sunshine on Saturday morning confirmed no abnormal hunger, and he still seemed to like us. We were shattered with sleep deprivation and guilt, but more determined to get this to work. And so again on Saturday night: Far less misery and fairly quick to fall asleep again. Hmmm. We chanced a hopeful wink to each other that this might be working. And again on Sunday night. Very late wakeup, and only 2 mins before he fell asleep again. Could it be? And yes it could be: Monday night he didn’t wake at all, in fact slept 30 mins beyond the time we’d expect him to wake. Still happy. Still smiling. Still loves us. Hoorah! Chance or not? NOT! He slept through again, as did grateful, excited parents.

It was darn miserable at the time, and we felt like real buggers, but the proof is there that the feed was unnecessary, and he’s still full of beans and growing great. Don’t know if I’d have thought it up, but hat’s off to whoever did. Sleep Training is surely worth the misery of 3-4 nights.