How to Sleep Train Your Dragon

As I might have whined about mentioned in my previous blog post, we've been having some trouble getting Lady Infant to sleep more than three hours together at night. It started about three weeks ago and was starting to really put a strain on our sanity. You'd think that after successfully sleep and nap training one child, we'd feel like we had some idea of what to do, but every child really is different. Sir Toddler had night feedings until he was nine months old, but he didn't regress for long periods of time like this little lady has. We were also able to get him to sleep through the night by replacing the last feeding with a sippy cup of water, because he was so much older.  Between the exhaustion and the stubbornness of Queen Baby, I felt like a new mom all over again. Humble pie be ours.

After I finally admitted to myself that I was out of ideas, I reached out to our beloved pediatrician via our online medical records service and both she and the RN in the office told us to go ahead and eliminate night feedings, and use the Ferber method. I tend to shy away from strict "methods" in parenting, but I do know from my limited experience how important consistency is, plus we'd used some version of Ferber with Sir Toddler without permanently scarring him (as far as I can tell).  So we decided to let Lady Infant cry herself back to sleep at night, checking on her every 10-15 minutes.

I hope Roger Goodell doesn't find out about our improperly inflated air mattress.

Since she was waking up not fussing, but screaming her head off most nights, we made the crazy insane decision to sleep on an air mattress in our living room. It was kind of like a weird sleepover. We set up white noise in her room, turned on a fan in ours, plugged in the baby monitor, and braced ourselves after her 10 PM feeding for a long night. Our plan, if she woke and cried, was to switch off the baby monitor, set a timer for 10 minutes, and then switch it back on after it went off to see if she was still crying.

The long night...wasn't. Mr. Husband nobly checked on her once and soothed her after her first ten minutes of crying, and then she was asleep by the time the second timer went off. We did another night in the living room and didn't have to go back up at all, so we decided to take the bold step of moving back into our own bed. It became apparent to us, however, that Lady Infant is quite aware that her roommates include The Food (me) and The Fun One (Mr. Husband), so we MacGyvered a little privacy screen.

Lady Infant still likes to wake up and squawk in the middle of the night, but instead of screaming her head off for hours, she fusses for a few minutes and puts herself back to sleep. Mr. Husband and I are eagerly anticipating the day these wakings stop so that we can move her into Sir Toddler's room, but for now we're sleeping better and everyone is happier.

How do you deal with sleeping woes?