Sleep Learning: Part Two

Go catch up on part one!

I think that the single most helpful element of this book was the sleep schedule. Good naps = good nighttime sleep (I have found this to be absolutely true!), and once we got naps under control everything else started to fall into place.

It seems so intuitive and obvious now, but I just didn't have a clue how to schedule his naps. I tried - for weeks on end - to watch him closely, read his signals, and let him "settle into" his own nap schedule. Well, that was a massive flop. For one thing, he just never settled into a schedule. I honestly can't even give you an example of a typical day because it varied so much! It didn't help that I (apparently) wasn't 100% committed to letting him lead. Looking back, I can see that I was constantly "trying" this and "trying" that... two naps, three naps, one nap, napping here, napping there, napping with music, napping without music, swing swinging, swing not swinging, swaddle, no swaddle, nursing to sleep, laying him down awake, picking him up when he cried, not picking him up... chaos. I had no clue what I was doing, and I felt that strongly. How was I ever going to find that magical combination of conditions with so many variables in play? When he would wake up and cry, I didn't even know for sure whether I was being realistic in expecting him to sleep any longer. I didn't know whether I had laid him down at an appropriate time or whether he had slept long enough, whether I should be trying to do something about it or just going in and getting him. I felt so helpless and frustrated.

The sleep schedule gave me a concrete framework to work from, and (lo and behold) I quickly found that it was also spot-on in terms of his sleep cues. Once I was looking for cues at a particular interval, I began to notice more subtle ones, and they very consistently cropped up right around the time that the sleep schedule would predict. Now he rarely gets super-cranky, because the schedule catches him before he reaches that point, and he goes down without a fight because the timing of the nap, or bed time, is appropriate. Once I knew that I was doing the right thing, I had the confidence to implement the check-in plan knowing that it was definitely nap time, and that he definitely needed the sleep. That confidence has made all the difference for me. While it was tough letting him do some crying and self-soothing (the few times that I had to do the check-ins), knowing that I was doing the right thing helped me to stay strong because I wasn't second-guessing myself the entire time. After about 3 days he was napping much better and the bulk of the crying was over, and after about 5-6 days I can honestly say that he was completely done with the crying jags. He might wake up and fuss a few times during a nap, but only for about 30 seconds at the very most - he almost immediately puts himself back to sleep if he wakes up early. He might change the position of his head or roll onto his side or his belly, but he just sucks on his fingers and drifts right off to sleep. It's incredible.

Quick aside: We also made the decision to go ahead and move him to his crib for naps while we were at it. If we were going to go through a tough sleep learning process we might as well get it all over with at once. I didn't want to get things all squared away only to completely change his sleep environment in a few weeks and essentially start all over again.

Nighttime was a little tougher because he's still in his bassinet in our room, so "checking in" was more like sitting up and making myself visible to him, versus hunkering down under the covers and stealthily scooching away from him so that he couldn't really see me. I'll admit that this arrangement was not exactly ideal, and I second-guessed myself a lot as a result. I wondered whether I was being terribly unfair to him, since he obviously knew that I was still there whether he could see me or not. It took a little longer to work out the nighttime kinks as a result, and it was much more difficult to lay there next to him listening to him cry (particularly at 3am!) than to listen from another room. It took 4 or 5 nights, some better than others, for him to stop having crying jags in the middle of the night. These crying fits (both day and night) rarely lasted beyond the second check-in, and I usually didn't ever have to check in a second time - he would almost always put himself to sleep before 10 minutes were up. He did make it beyond the second check-in a few times, and once or twice even made it to a 15-minute check-in. I won't sugar-coat it... those were really trying and I did plenty of my own crying right along with him. But it's also important to remember that we were having ugly sleep battles prior to this, during which he (and I) would quite often be crying off and on for as long as an hour or even an hour and a half - this was a major improvement, and he was learning to self-soothe in the process.

We found that light background music and white noise (a fan) help to distract him from the fact that he is otherwise alone and help keep him from ever getting worked up. Laying him down awake (groggy, but not asleep) was really important, and I feel that having the background noise was the key to his success in falling asleep on his own. We discovered that music helped one night when he was really giving us a fit at bed time - we had friends over at the time, and one of them suggested it so we gave it a try. It took less than a minute for him to settle down once we snuck into the room and turned it on, and we've been using it ever since! We don't play it all night, just until we go up to bed, but I do let it play during his naps. Once he could put himself to sleep initially, he quickly got the hang of doing it whenever he woke during the night. By night two - no exaggeration - I was hearing him wake up, rustle around and maybe make a few little fussy noises, suck on his fingers, and then... nothing. Back to sleep all on his own. Multiple times a night. Of course over the first few nights there were some wakings that didn't go so well, but I was just blown away by how quickly he started soothing himself back to sleep - it was almost immediate.

I can't say enough about having a concrete plan to work with - it made all the difference for us. While my intentions were noble, allowing my infant to work out his own sleep schedule was just total chaos. I wouldn't expect him to be able to manage any other part of his care, so I'm not sure what I really expected. I suppose I was just hoping that his biological circadian rhythms would take over, but he didn't yet have a "rhythm" to work with - his poor little body didn't know where to start. First I got the help I needed to make sure that he was in a good sleep environment, and learned a few tricks along to way to make it even better - he sleeps in a darkened room (blackout curtain, $15.99 at Target) with background music and a fan for white noise. Then we implemented a sleep schedule that quickly put his body into a rhythm, making it easier and easier to lay him down because his body was ready for sleep - he wakes 11-12 hours after bed time, his first nap begins 2 hours after wake time and his second nap begins 2 1/2 hours after his first nap ends. Sometimes (depending on the duration of his naps) he'll take a short third nap in his swing to get him through the evening. After a few tough days, we were through the worst of the crying and well on our way toward peaceful sleep for our little one.

Now, many of those crucial factors have become less crucial. We were serious sticklers for about three weeks, but having been consistent for that long has really cemented his routine and his sleep skills. Now it's not a huge deal if he falls asleep nursing and I lay him down already asleep, because he is more than capable of putting himself to sleep if he wakes early. It was necessary to lay him down awake for a while in order to give him the opportunity to learn that skill, but now that he has learned it he's fine either way. We try hard to stick to his schedule but the weekends are tough, and again, it's not as big a deal now that he has a solid set of sleep skills. He's far more flexible, and missing a nap doesn't completely ruin his nighttime sleep as it used to.


Very long story short, commitment and consistency really paid off, and it didn't take long at all for us to be enjoying better sleep for the whole family, and a much happier, better-rested baby. He was a serious grouch there for a while, and we were beginning to wonder where our laid-back, easy-going baby had gone! With better sleep, I am noticing huge improvements in his overall mood and he seems to be exploding developmentally, suddenly rolling over constantly, pushing up on his arms, and sitting up very well. (Another quick aside: For the longest time I was really worried about him not rolling over much - he had done it a few times but for several weeks just didn't seem to be able to figure out that he could do it at will. Over the past week or so, he has completely mastered back-to-belly rolling and does it with ease every time I lay him on his back.) I would highly recommend The Sleepeasy Solution as a middle-of-the-road sleep training method that is reasonable to implement and yields fast, lasting results. Sleep training is tough no matter how you slice it, but it has done wonders for our little man and was absolutely worth the temporary struggle.