How I Sleep Train

Michael is sleep trained. Praise the Lord.

And what good is having a blog if you can’t shout this from the rooftops?

He is my 5th child to be sleep trained. And each time I was pressed up hard against desperation.

There is an acute edge to sleep deprivation. It is subtle, incessant, fluid, crushing. Every coping mechanism in you is sedated; everything that overwhelms you and makes you cranky and sucks patience out of you is loud. I am convinced a babies smiley-est days coincide with the hardest days of sleep deprivation because God knew we would need a light to our days.

I have historically trained our children at around 6 months. Ronan is about 2-3 weeks behind Michael on most things, and though he has always been a better sleeper than Michael, I think he is teething right now, so I will sleep train him next. I wanted to share how I did it with Michael while it is fresh because it feels like a miracle every time, and I think it could help other families. With the twins we were traveling and teething for most of their 6^thmonth, so I waited, just as the bible told me too.

Not THEE Bible.

The Sleep Training Bible.

The Sleep Easy Solution.

I know that there are a lot of methods out there, and if another method or no method works for you know that I AM THRILLED FOR YOU. I am thrilled for any way a momma can get sleep.

But when my friend Angi mentioned that her nine-month old wasn’t sleeping through the night, and that her 5 year old didn’t sleep through the night until he was 3, I gave her the quick 5 minute synopsis about how The Sleep Easy Solution works since I had just re-read the book in preparation, and she emailed me back in two weeks to tell me it worked! Her son was sleeping through the night!

So I figured I would leave that synopsis here in case it helps even one other family.

First, let me say what it is not – it is not the Ferber method. It is not cry it out, although there are small contained periods of crying that in my experience have been at the most two 10-minute crying sessions. It is not attachment parenting.

What it is: the theory that learning to fall asleep on our own is a life skill. And we can help our babies learn it by letting them try to fall asleep on their own. You can learn more about it, and get their handouts at their website, www.sleepyplanet.com.

Here it goes:

When you sleep train, you need to pick a week where you are not traveling, and you and your baby are not sick or teething or otherwise going through a big transition or milestone, such as suddenly crawling, or starting a new job or sitter. Waiting for a good week pays off, and will reduce the frustration and amount of time you spend sleep training.

The book goes through several checklists that are also available on their website: what your nightly routine should be (a bath, getting dressed in a sleep sack, reading a book, a song, a nurse or bottle feed), what needs to be in the room (blackout shades, possibly a white noise machine or humidifier, absolutely nothing in the bed/crib that is stimulating save one lovely if they need, more for older kids).

You do your routine every night for a week or so, and those nights record the times your child wakes up and how long they feed for. This is the most crucial step for me, since all my kids fed through the night out of habit, mainly because they nursed back to sleep. So my main goal in sleep training is to break them of needing to fall asleep sucking, and then also wean them of their night feeds. Other people might have other ‘sleep stealers’ as the book calls them, and they go through how to deal with each one. But for me, our main sleep stealer is night feeds.

As you are doing your routine every night during the ‘warm up’ period (as I like to call it), your baby will start to associate a bath and a book with bed time, and they will become cues that it is night time. It’s also good to try to start putting your baby down when they are drowsy but not asleep. Falling asleep on their own, without sleep aids, is ultimately the goal, and this is SO much easier to do if you catch them in that window when they are naturally drowsy. When putting them down for the night, you can pat their back or bum, sing a song, play a musical toy that is short (no crib entertainment stations), but try to walk out while they are still awake. If Michael fell asleep while nursing, I would wake him up by kissing him and saying goodnight or talking to him. Then I would lay him down in the crib. I found that each night I tried to do this our babies got better and better at learning they could rub their head back and forth to sooth themselves, or rub their hand back and forth, or scratch the sheets rhythmically. These are all great tools since it is their way to self sooth. If you have a thumb sucker, they have a great built in way to self sooth. As they get older, this often becomes rubbing a lovey or stroking the silky part of it or rubbing it across their nose. (A paci is only ok if they can reliably put it back in their mouth on their own – since the goal is for them to put themselves to sleep on their own – and if you do want to use the authors recommend to leave several in the crib).

The main goal of the warm up period is to practice putting them to sleep drowsy but not asleep, and take note of the times they wake up. You should also be filling your husband in on the plan once you’ve come up with it so you are both on the same page, and so he can be moral support to you if you are waffling in your decisions.

When you are ready to sleep train, follow the charts they have on their website, sleepyplanet.com or in the book.

The goal is to get your baby to sleep for 10-11 hours and have some sample schedules. Our goal range was 7:30-6am. They will have you write down the times they’ve been waking up in between – for Michael it was 10:30, 2, and 4:30. Then you write down how long they feed for. We had 18 minutes, 5 minutes, 5 minutes (think this is roughly equal to 6 oz, 4 oz, 4 oz of bottle feeding.).

You set your alarm for an hour before their normal wake up time. My times were: 9:30 dream feed before I went to bed, and set my alarm for 1 and 3:30. The first night you wake them up at those times and give them their feed. The next night you feed them at the same times, but shave off 1 0z or 2 minutes of nursing. The next night you shave 1 oz. or 2 min. of nursing. By the third night, I was down to one feed for 4 minutes, and the other feeds for 1 minute. Then the last night, I dropped 2 of the feeds at 1 and 3:30, and only feed him at 9:30 for 4 minutes.

If they should wake up at their old feed times, and Michael did the night we dropped them, you let them cry for 10 minutes, and then if they are still crying you go in for 30 seconds and stand in the MIDDLE of the room – halfway between the bed and the door – and say “its ok, baby, you’re fine. I love you. It’s night night time. Go back to sleep.” Or whatever loving reassuring words you want to deliver. DO NOT PICK YOUR BABY UP. DO NOT FEED THEM OR PAT THEIR BUM OR BACK OR TOUCH THEM AT ALL. DO NOT PULL BUNNY’S MUSICAL CHORD OR TURN LITTLE LAMB’S KNOB. You want to let them know you are nearby, but they are fine, and they can just go back to sleep. You want to let them know that their cries won’t result in getting cuddles or food, otherwise they will always keep crying and never give up and just go to sleep. This concept helps me make decisions in my middle of the night sleepy state. (When Michael woke up at 2:30 and his feed time was 3:30 I was like, should I just feed him early? And then I remembered this principle and thought, NO. You can’t reward a wake up and a cry with a feed. I let him cry, he was out in 8 minutes, and then I woke him an hour later at 3:30 to give him his feed.)

On our 4th night Michael cried for 10 minutes during his 2 am feed time, and I went in and reassured him, for less than 30 seconds, not touching him. When I went back to bed he cried for 8 more minutes and THAN HE WENT TO SLEEP. ON HIS OWN. This right here is the point at which he is become sleep trained. He was able to put himself back to bed.

The next night he woke up at the 2 am feed time, cried for 5-8 minutes and went back to bed. I didn’t have to get out of bed at all.

The third night, he slept from 7:30-6 with just his 9:30 dream feed.

ALLELUJIA.

Ronan woke up at 4:30 so it wasn’t as epic as it was with my other kids BUT STILL. It amazes me that it is so possible to sleep train a baby in a week! And all my other kids trained in a week as well.

If this sounds hard and complicated, it’s really not – just blindly follow what they tell you to do on their print outs. And just follow it as best you can. I’m sharing all the details in case they help someone. It’s an art not a science so don’t freak out if it doesn’t go perfectly according to plan.

There are times where illness, teething and traveling disrupt their ability to go back to sleep on their own. Usually during those times they needed me to rock them or feed them to go back to sleep and started to get used to it. When they were off track I just went back to the basics and re-did a sleep training week and it would only take 2-3 days to get back on track.

Ok, I’m going back to taking care of these sweet babies now. But I hope this is as life changing for you (if you need it!) as it has been for me.