A Pretty Rock Jewelry

If you’ve been following my thread, you know I said I’d give cry it out a full two weeks. Today is Day 14 in the journey and I’ve learned much about myself, my daughter and what future discipline and interactions may look like. Suffice to say, I have a lot of work to do on my end. Haha!

We have successfully achieved sleeping through the night. It’s what I had initially desired when I started out trying to sleep train the girl. As you may now well know, I wasn’t counting on the sleep training wrecking havoc with her daytime nap time.

While it’s been a heck of a two weeks and hard, hard work, I can say I would recommend cry it out to anyone who has tried everything else. It’s not the most fun listening to your kid cry, but there’s a certain satisfaction in seeing the transformation in them to understand the routine of what is happening and what comes next in their day. I still, however, cannot say I see the calmness that comes with the routine. Our time will come.

Tonight though, she did really well. Lots less crying.

It’s also funny to see her understand once I read the books, it’s time for singing, then time for bed. So she’s starting to close the books midway into the reading… having me start over from the beginning or having me switch books. Makes me laugh.

As far as naps today, I decided she wasn’t ready to move to one nap like I had hoped. I’m consistently seeing the tired signals around 10:30-11am. I never used to see them this clearly, so I think I can thankfully say the regular nighttime sleeping is helping regulate her  wake times.

So, after she fell asleep on my lap for the first nap, I took her upstairs and tried to lay her on our bed. She started crying, so I moved her to her crib and let her cry it out for the rest of the hour.

Around 2:15pm she decided it was nap time again and fell asleep in my lap. Took her upstairs to her crib after 10 minutes of napping where she proceeded to cry for 15 minutes and then… voilà! Silence! She napped for 50 minutes straight! (Or so I think ’cause I didn’t hear a peep or rustle from her room.) But then she woke up – and I thought she was ready to wake up – so I brought her downstairs with me just to have her fall asleep on me for another hour and 15. Should celebrate little victories, I guess.

And you already heard a little about tonight’s bedtime. She stopped crying after 2 minutes, just to start crying again when Snickers decided to open her door and pay her a visit. (That’ll teach me not to secure the door better at night…) Fortunately, she settled down quickly again.

So, what’s next with the sleep training, you ask? Nap time. We have to work on getting her to nap by herself in the crib.

Thank you to all who have followed along, read silently or commented. I appreciate your patience as I got my frustrations out on “paper”, so to say… I’ll make sure to post a weekly update on the nap situation until we get it sorted out!

…Otherwise known was Sleep Training Weekend – Day 11, 12 and 13.

Well, the laptop switch over I briefly alluded to kinda took priority over blogging about baby girl. I forget how many things I customize on my laptop just to make it a portable work machine.

So as it turns out, I can happily say the two nights I didn’t blog, she cried through the whole bedtime routine, but stopped crying within 5 minutes of my leaving her bedroom. We heard a few short peeps from her at night, but she has successfully slept til 7:30am both nights.  I am so super happy and excited about that. Tonight she’s not doing so hot (cried a little longer at bedtime – just cried a little as I write this paragraph), but I think that has to do with something else I did differently for naps these past two days…

Some backstory… On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I take a work morning and have our neighbor take care of her for me. It gives me 4 hours of uninterrupted work time, or a chance to get out and run a ton of errands without dragging her along.

After all the nap issues I was having, I decided to transition her to one nap a day. I’ve been told over and over again, consistency and routine are the keys. Since her morning nap always falls right around church time on Sundays and therefore she never naps twice on Sundays, I thought this would be my best bet.

I have no desire to take away her second nap, but pushing nap time back to 1pm allows me to let her sleep 2-3 hours uninterrupted. With two naps and the church issue on Sundays, she would always be getting 2 naps, with the exception being Sundays, hence ruining the whole “routine” of the routine.

My neighbor is wonderful, but when I explained this to her and ask her to make sure to keep the girl up while she was with her, she wasn’t onboard with the idea. She was of the 2 nap camp so when baby girl fell asleep at her house, she let her sleep. Imagine my dismay.

I knew that would throw a wrench in the day’s nap, so I waited an extra half hour before trying to get baby girl to sleep. Sadly, she fought her nap and cried – even more than usual.

A conversation with a friend the day prior made me realize maybe I needed to concentrate on making sure baby girl was sleeping well through the night before I tried to tackle the nap issue. She recommended I go back to holding and rocking the girl to sleep before laying her down. Lately though, I can have the girl knocked out and when I go to lay her in bed, she wakes up with eyes opened round as quarters! So frustrating!

After listening to the girl cry hysterically for 30 minutes at this particular naptime, I decided it was time to calm her down and get her sleeping any which way I could. I tried rocking her to calm  her down for 15 minutes to no avail. I then decided it would be best to lay down with her in our bed to see if I could get her to fall asleep. She was not having any of that either. I literally had to lay in bed with her laying on top of me for 15 minutes before she finally calmed down and allowed me to lay her directly on the bed. Broke my heart she was so overtired.

But that day… oh that day the girl slept 3+ hours! I believe she would have slept more had I let her, but it was 5pm and with bedtime being in the 8 o’clock hour, I needed her up to expend some energy.

The next day, when I went to put her in her crib for nap time, she cried at me again. I just didn’t have the energy and honestly, I so enjoyed the 30 minutes it took me to get her to fall asleep (since I fell asleep, too, in the process), that I decided to take her to our bed again. She slept a little over 1.5 hours, which again was fantastic.

Today, I had my friend over helping me clean the house. While baby girl was a little wound up from seeing her, she was able to calm down and sleep 1.5 hours again. However, she did wake up after the hour mark at which point I had to head back upstairs to get her to sleep more.

I’m not sure if I’m doing more harm than good with having her sleep in our bed, but the fact that I can get her to actually sleep for that time period has to count for something. It is so much better than listening to her cry up there for an hour and a half. That’s just like torture and the checks I make to her room to make sure she is okay and let her know I still exists even though she can’t see me sometimes make the whole situation worse, I fear.

So the update? I think night time sleeping is well on its way to being fully under control (and I was even able to sleep from 11pm to 4am last night without waking once – I’m usually up at 2:15 like clockwork.) Now to tackle naptime sleep.

Any suggestions?

 

Just a quick update. (Had to go out and buy a new laptop and have spent the day setting it up. The old one was making noises akin to grinding bones and the such…) Despite being overly-tired, she only cried twice last night. I thought that was rather good.

Then today, I decided to take her out shopping around her old sleep time and she fell asleep in the 5 minute drive to the warehouse store. Then after the shopping trip, we still had some time left before her new nap time, so I went to meet Jason for lunch. And, of course, she fell asleep again in the 5 minutes it took me to get across the street to the other shopping center.

What happened on the ride home from lunch? You guessed it… she fell asleep. I gingerly removed her from the car seat, took off her jacket and got all the way upstairs. As soon as I started to put her in the crib, she woke up. :/ Seems to be the new trend.

So no real naps for today. Just power naps, including a 15-minute one I let her take around 6:30pm tonight ’cause she was having a major meltdown.

Despite it all, she went to bed quickly. Cried on and off through the bath, the book reading and the singing, but 5 minutes after she was tucked in she knocked out! Love that.

Someday we’ll get to do everything without any crying…

Yesterday was heavenly. After that 2.5 hour nap during the day, she still cried off and on while I ran the bedtime routine. Once I started singing the last song of the night, she cried even harder and after 5 minutes of crying after I put her in the crib, she went to sleep… until 7:30 this morning. It felt glorious.

And then there was today. She fell asleep on the way home from church. So when we got home, I took off her jacket and shoes, made it all the way to the crib, when she realized what I was doing and she started crying again. I waited the regular time and decided to go back upstairs to rock her to sleep with no luck. Tried laying her down twice and twice she woke up. Today was more crying than napping.

Hoping tonight will be easier. Hoping she won’t be overtired from not sleeping today. Hoping the routine kicks in for her. Hoping it goes easier.

We may have reached the turning point. Last night, we only heard baby girl twice (which is so much better than the previous nights of overtired-ness…is that even a word?)

Today we had a church ministry Christmas party. While I was off rounding up the kids for the party, baby girl was getting passed around and enjoying all the holiday activities. We left early so I could make sure I had her home for nap time. While she didn’t calm down easily, I didn’t want her to continue screaming for a long time. I really needed here to get some sleep. So after 30 minutes, I went back in and rocked her to sleep.

SHE SLEPT 2.5 HOURS WITHOUT A PEEP! YAY!

Then tonight, we went to a Christmas light show and made sure we got back in time for her bedtime. While she cried through here bath and wind down, she only cried for 5 minutes after I left the room. Woot!

This was a happy day. Still tired, but stayed up to have. Movie night with my hubby. Now off to bed… G’night!

We have now made it full circle. I was truly hoping by this time she would be sleeping through the night and sleeping well at naps and that I would magically have a well-rested child. Sadly, no one prepared me for sleep training to wreck her naps and for her to become more needy and clingy. I don’t blame her though – if I was her age and felt my mom was abandoning me, I would hold on for dear life!

Tonight also marks the half way point. Just one more week of this and then it will be time for me to make a decision on whether I want to keep trying this or if I want to just quit. I’m praying we’ll get over this hump this weekend. I’m praying she will begin to sleep well for both naps and nighttime. I’m praying she will stop crying the moment I pick her up to go upstairs – that moment she realizes what’s in store for her in the next half hour. I’m praying.

And again, I’m tired. So off to bed I go.

P.S. I know I’ve lost a few readers with this thread series, but I’ve needed an outlet to get my frustrations. Thank you to all who are still subscribed for hanging in there with me.

I’ll keep this post short ’cause I’m making a beeline to bed. I mentioned yesterday baby girl didn’t want to sleep at either one of her bedtimes. We suffered much for it last night. After two wonderful nights of her sleeping through the night, she slept a total of 3-4 hours and then proceeded to cry every hour on the hour from 1am on. Suffice to say, we’re both tired.

Today, I decided to change her nap time cold turkey to one nap. (With how much she is sleeping at night and her resistance to the other naps, I thought we might be making the 2 to 1 transition at the same time all this was going on.) So, I picked her up from the neighbors 1 hour early, fed her lunch, played a little, then off to bed. She cried for a whole hour and a half.

I wasn’t going to have another repeat of last night with an overtired baby not sleeping well, so I went upstairs and rocked her to help her go to sleep. Took me 30 minutes, but she was down for a nap at 3pm and would have slept longer than 5pm had I not gone in to wake her up.

I’m grateful she had that nap. I know tonight we will all sleep well…