Our sleep training journey

The Challenge….

Babies are like blank canvas. You paint what you like. Let us talk about our sleep training journey today. I am sure my husband and I were not the only ones battling a baby who did not sleep well. The first three months were fine. Our son would do what all babies do- eat, sleep, poop and repeat. It was not that difficult to make him sleep. Feed him and rock him a little and he would sleep. Not bad, right? 

However, as the months progressed and he started becoming more aware of his surroundings and started moving around, it was no longer easy to make him sleep. It felt like a hit and try method. Some days/ nights he would sleep while feeding whereas on other days he would not, and we would have to take him out on a drive to make him sleep. That worked initially but soon going for car rides became a teary and stressful experience. Our first challenge was to make him sleep and the second challenge was to make him sleep in his bed. He was just not ready to sleep in his bed. He would sleep with us in our bed. I am not an advocate of co-sleeping. Him sleeping in bed with us and waking up a few times each night was bothering me. 

At the six months doctor’s appointment, his doctor suggested that we needed to stop feeding him at night and advised that we needed to sleep train him. My husband and I discussed and decided to go slow and easy. We did not want to overwhelm our son. In about two or three weeks we were able to train him not to have any formula at night. He would wake up and we would give him water and then try to make him sleep. Sometimes he would go back to sleep, other times he would sit down and want to play or simply cry loudly. When you are tired you really do not feel like playing at 2 am. He had some favorite lullabies and I would play them on my phone while rocking him. Sometimes it would take 10 mins to make him sleep sometimes as long as two hours. 

By the time he was almost nine months old, things were getting out of hand. We were starting to believe that our child was a bad sleeper. We had tried everything from having a daytime schedule (there was one in place but not very strictly followed) to trying to get a nighttime schedule. Nothing seemed to work. The most he would sleep was seven to eight hours and wake up 1-2 times each night. There were times when he did not sleep till 1 am and we had to take him out for an hour-long drive to make him drowsy. 

 At the nine months appointment, the doctor insisted that we needed to sleep train him and the issues we were having were because he did not know how to sleep. He was getting overtired. She suggested the cry out method. Now, all this time I had been advocating against this method. But she assured me that it was not as bad as it sounded, and it was a matter of only the first three nights. I thought about it. I thought a lot and finally made up my mind to go for it. I told my husband about it and he seemed very doubtful if this was going to work for us. He suggested waiting for a few months and then we could try. However, I was determined to sleep train him. I am a full-time working mama and balancing work, baby, and home when you are sleep deprived is hard. We decided to follow the gentle sleep training method instead of the cry out method.

Sleep training journey:

Day 1: 

7 pm: Fed the baby, brushed his two tiny teeth, kissed him goodnight and put him in his crib. Not even a minute later, crying started. Not too bad. Slowly the crying started getting louder. 10 mins later, I walked in to check on him. Cuddled for a few minutes, some more kisses and he was back in his crib. Crying, more crying, some more crying, yelling and what not. It was breaking my heart to have my baby cry out loud while I sat in the other room trying to be strong. My husband and I took chances to check on him every 2-3 mins for the first hour. We then started checking on him every 10 mins and eventually 15 mins. We were constantly keeping an eye on him through the baby monitor.

Around 9 PM: The cries started fading. I went to his room. Cuddled with him, sang a lullaby and he slept.

After he slept, I checked on him so many times to make sure he was ok. He had never slept all by himself. So many thoughts. I was also feeling very bad for putting him through all this crying. My husband kept reminding me that this was for his benefit. 

He woke up twice that night but for the very first time, he spent the whole night in his room, in his crib. I was able to make him sleep both the times he woke up. This gave me the confidence that I could do it. Two hours was not that bad. 

Day 2:

7 PM: Fed the baby, brushed the two tiny teeth, kissed him goodnight and put him in his crib hoping that it would be better.  Repeated the same method as day 1. For the first half an hour, I checked on him every 10 mins and then every 15 mins. Much to my surprise it took an hour for him to sleep and the crying was significantly less in comparison to day 1. 

He woke up twice that night, but I was able to get him to sleep in about 15-20 mins each time. My confidence level was growing. My opinion about sleep training was changing. I did not feel horrible like I felt on day 1. Maybe I am not as bad as I thought I was. 

Day 3:

7 PM: Fed the baby, brushed the two tiny teeth, kissed him goodnight and put him in his crib hoping there would be some magic today. I was very amazed to see the results. It took him 25 mins to sleep and the crying was very minimal, and he was crying, soothing himself, crying, soothing himself and then fell asleep.

Just like the previous two nights, he woke up a few times and I was able to make him go back to sleep. 

I was over the moon. From 2 hours down to 25 mins with minimal crying. I was feeling super confident. I would be lying if I said I did not feel like a genius. My husband repeatedly kept saying that is so awesome and we did it. We both were not expecting this to work for us, but it did. 

Fast forward to Day 7:

As the days passed, the tears were getting minimal to no tears and the time taken to sleep was reducing significantly. Day 7, he took 5 mins to sleep. Yes, you guessed it right, I was jumping with joy. The sense of mission accomplished is very satisfying. 

The Challenge….

We were able to overcome the struggles of making him sleep by himself in the evening however he was still not sleeping through the night. Some nights it was easy to make him sleep, other nights I would have to sleep on the couch cuddling him or sleep on the floor with him. The reason I did that was to make him understand that no matter what happens we are not going to another room. For some reason, my son preferred to see me when he woke up at night. Every time my husband tried to calm him down and make him sleep again the cries got louder. The moment I held him he would be quiet and ready to cuddle and sleep. It was a handful to deal with, but I did not mind it a lot. I was tired- sure. I was exhausted from the lack of sleep- sure. But I was patient and hopeful that he will sleep through the night soon. 

How  did we overcome the challenge? 

This all was happening at the same time when I launched my Instagram account @the_very_exhausted_mommy. One fine morning around 4 am, I was trying to make my son sleep and instead of sleeping he chose to play. I posted a picture of him on my Instagram describing my early morning and how I was struggling to get this kid back to sleep. That is when I met @kulalaland by Sofia Axelrod, PhD. She introduced herself. She is a sleep scientist based out of New York and works with a lot of parents like us to help them get their sleep back. She suggested checking out her Kulala app. I was very desperate to get my night sleep back, so I downloaded the app. The app is very simple to use and asks a few sets of questions about your baby. Once the questions are answered, the app suggests a schedule and provides some recommendations. The schedule which the app showed me was quite like the one we were following. The app showed a set of recommendations which seemed to be little things, but they made a huge difference. 

1. Black out curtains 
2. White noise machine 
3. 90 seconds rule (this rule has a qualifier: the baby should either be over 11 pounds or should be sleeping 4-5 hours at a stretch)
4. When you go to soothe the baby not to pick him up

For some reason, I never thought that pitch dark was a favorable condition to fall asleep or that it was necessary. I always thought if you are tired, no matter what you will sleep. It might sound silly, but we thought that if it is pitch dark the baby might feel scared. White noise- I never even imagined that was essential. Now, the most important 90 seconds rule. 

The app suggested, when the baby wakes up at night and cries, wait for 90 seconds before running over to soothe the baby. As a parent it is hard not to run to your crying baby. However, 90 seconds is not that long. It is not that hard on the baby and you. My son woke up and cried. Instead of running over to his room, I waited. The app has a 90 seconds timer (which is my favorite feature). At first, I was not too sure if the 90 seconds rule was going to work or not. I was getting ready to get out of the bed but at the 85 seconds mark, he went back to sleep. He woke up one more time that night and we did the same thing again. He went back to sleep at the 80 seconds mark. We repeated the same process next night. 

I am proud to say two nights later, my son slept through the night. It has been two months now and he has been sleeping through the nights. He is happy to go to bed and we no longer shed any tears. He has been sleeping 11.5 hours each night (7 pm – 6:30 am). Even if he cannot fall asleep right away, he will stay in his bed and try to sleep instead of sitting up or trying to stand. He wakes up as a happy baby and so do my husband and me. A good night’s sleep is a blessing. 

Nap training:

Once we mastered the art of sleeping through the night the next target was nap training. I did not try to do both nap training and sleep training at the same time because I feared too much crying. However, once he was sleep trained, training him to take naps was a cake walk. We had no issues to get him to sleep on his own. I made sure that the daytime schedule was enforced with a lot of strictness and once we started following the schedule strictly everything became easy. The moment it is 12:30 pm my son is in his bed, ready to nap. He naps anywhere between 2- 3 hours each day. 

Having him sleep trained/ nap trained has made my life easier. As a full-time working mama, it has made it easier for me to move my work schedule around his daytime schedule. Sometimes I wish, we had sleep trained him sooner. But I am glad we did not wait too long. Better late than never. 

My recommendations to other parents battling a bad sleeper: 

July 30th, 2020 I got the opportunity to do a live video with Dr. Axelrod on Instagram. We discussed my pregnancy journey, being a working mama and difficulties sleep training my son and what finally fixed it. Check out  #Momtalk with Dr. Axelrod

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CDSYb-QFgsi/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Good luck with your sleep training journey!