Adventures in Sleep Training: First Full Day

Well, we made it through night number one quite successfully and have now completed our first full day of sleep training. That means we had to conquer not just night sleep but also naps. According to the book, it can take up to a week to get babies to successfully fall asleep and stay asleep during naptime. The odds were not in our favor.

Nap #1 was pretty rough. Jacob fussed for about 10 minutes, slept for 20, and then cried off and on for the last 30 minutes. Naps are supposed to be at least an hour, so unfortunately I couldn't take him out of his crib before that hour was up. Since he had such a good night, it was rough hearing him cry so much.

Nap #2 also started with crying. This time it was only about 5 minutes, and then he slept for about 20 minutes again. He then woke up and cried for the remaining 35 minutes. Once again, this was not fun for me to hear.

Nap #3 was kind of a cheat. According to the book, if your baby does not get a full nap the first two times around, you are supposed to either use motion (driving in the car or moving in the stroller) or your old ways to get the baby a full length nap. This way the baby will not be overtired and have a harder time settling at bedtime. Since Jacob has never slept in his stroller and rarely sleeps in the car, I decided to feed him and then put him in his swing to sleep. This totally worked. In fact, he only ate for about 5 minutes and then passed out for 1 hour and 40 minutes!

Because he struggled so much with his naps, I began to get worried about putting him to bed that night. Luckily, it ended up being super easy. We went to church before he went to bed, and they gave him a bottle right before we left. They said he tried to go to sleep, but they kept him awake (because I asked them to). As soon as we got home I changed him, read a story, and then put him right into his crib with his sheep. He must have fallen asleep immediately, because he didn't make a peep. I even checked on him 10 minutes later, and he was passed out. It was amazing! I honestly could not believe how easy it was.

Jacob slept great the whole night. He had 3 or 4 times when he woke up crying for about a minute or two, but then he fell right back to sleep on his own. He even woke up 10 minutes before his wake up time, put himself back to sleep, and slept 6 minutes past the wake up time! So he ended up getting a full eleven hours with no difficulty. We still had to feed him, of course, but we started the weaning process and were able to put him back to bed with no problems after each feeding. I am so happy with this process already. I can't wait to see how the next few days go.