Take 2

Alright, let's try this again. Just watched an episode of house the other day that had a hard core blogger on it and it reminded me of my dusty blog that hasn't been touched in over a year. So, here I am dusting it off and trying again.

We started sleep training Rosalin this week. We've been using the Ferber method which, I understand, is controversial but in the end she's my child and I get to decide how to parent her right? I know people are against letting your baby cry, and I understand that everyone has their opinions but the good thing about this blog is that it's only my opinion and no one else's. So far things have been going really well, and the amount of time that she spends crying is decreasing all the time. The first night was just over an hour, and for the nap that she's taking right now it was only 15 minutes total. She stopped crying in the middle for a while because she decided she would rather play than cry or sleep. She actually got her legs caught in the crib bars so we took a picture before helping her of course.

I've read about other methods of sleep training but I didn't agree with them 100%. I like how Dr. Ferber talks about sleep associations and breaking habits. I've read a bit about no cry methods and they aren't for me. I've heard through the grapevine that the baby whisperer even suggests you crawl in the crib with the baby if they won't settle. IS SHE CRAZY?? I would never crawl in the crib with my baby. What does that teach them? If they cry long enough, I'll crawl in the crib and they get what they want, that's what it teaches them. And then you'll be crawling in bed with your baby every night until they're leaving for college. If that doesn't scare you Baby Whisperers, I don't know what will.

The hardest part for us has been giving up her soother. She LOVES the soother, and with it she can put herself to sleep in 5 minutes with less than a minute of crying. However, she gets up every hour looking for it and that means I get no sleep. So, we've gone cold turkey on the soother at all sleep times. She still gets it occasionally during the day, but not always mostly if she just needs to be quiet for a short period of time, like I'm just trying to make a phone call or we're in church for example. I'm also cutting her down on her nighttime feedings. I'm not letting her feed more often than 3.5 hours at night and we bump it up by 30 minutes every couple of nights. We've gone down from 5 feedings between our bedtime feeding and our morning feeding to two, and I'm loving it.

So far things are going great, but I guess we'll see what the future brings, it's only been 2 days.