Sleeping Update

Alright, so we are going on our 6th night of "sleep training" with Grady. My last post described how the first night was terrible. The second night he slept from 8:30 pm - 5:30 am without a peep and then cried a little bit and then slept on until 7! I was thinking "wow, this is great, that was so easy!" HA...HA...HA. The next two nights were terrible again, he slept until about 2, then couldn't settle in for more than 30-45 min of sleep at a time. So back to square one.

Last night we braced for another sleepless night. We decided to set the timer to go in every 20 minutes when he was crying to check on him but NOT give him his passy and force him to learn to soothe himself back to sleep. I just knew he would cry for hours. I was shocked when I woke up at 4 and had not heard him all night long, AND he was still asleep. So I went back to sleep and woke up again about 6:30. When I looked at the monitor this time he was awake and just looking around!! Amazing! I'm convinced that both nights he slept through he was just exhausted from crying all night the previous nights, but I'll take it!

What's funny is that when I ask a lot of my friends what they did with their young children to help them sleep through the night, nobody remembers. And to be honest, if someone asked me about CC's sleeping habits as an infant, I don't really remember. I remember her waking up all the time and gradually not waking up as much, but no real specifics. All of that to say while it feels like the end of the world at the moment, one day Grady's sleeping habits will be a faint memory to me as well (single tear drop). CC's current sleeping habits? Well, tonight she's sleeping in her rainboots!

Here we go!

I have been wanting to start a blog for a while now, I just wondered what I would actually write about! I mean not that we don't have PLENTY going on at our house at any given time...I just wasn't sure I would take the time to sit down and "blog" about it.

It was our decision last night to begin the "cry it out" process with Grady that helped me take this step into starting a blog about our family! I figured if we are gonna do this cry it out thing, I'm probably gonna need an outlet to talk through it. I mean if it's out there...in cyberspace... for everyone to read about, I might be more accountable to the process.

So here we go, we're crying it out, something we never did with CC who didn't consistently sleep through the night until she was about 1. I'm going back to work in 2 weeks so I'm hoping that is ample time to adjust. I'm relying on advice and encouragement from friends who swear after a week tops we will all be sleeping happily ALL NIGHT LONG. We'll see!!!!!!!!!!!

Last night went about as you would expect... HORRIBLE!!! Before we started this we had been putting Grady down about 8:30 or 9 and he would wake up consistently between 2-3am every night. Not to eat, we haven't been feeding him during the night for a while, but we would go in and give him his passy, reswaddle him & rock if necessary. Sometimes from that point on he would sleep until 6 or 7, other times he would wake up again every 30 minutes or hour, just very unpredictable. If you've seen this boy recently...HE'S HUGE!!

He can barely hold his head up because his cheeks are so big and heavy!! (not really he rolls over and holds his head up wonderfully for his age, developmentally above target I would say even haha) I'm just saying he has more than enough weight on his body to carry him through the night without needing to eat. So, I don't feel guilty in the least for doing this; my sanity is at stake! But like I said, it went horribly, he did sleep until his usual 2:30am waking, but then he cried and cried and cried AND CRIED. We, of course, went in at 15 min intervals to reassure him that we were still there and loved him but would NOT be picking him up tonight or any other night from now on!! Finally, he conked out right about the time his big sister wanted to wake up for the day...isn't that the way it always works with two??!!

So now, I'm staring night #2 of crying it out in the face, and relying on the words of seasoned mothers that have walked this path before me that "it might get worse before it gets better" :/