Solving My Child's Sleep Problems...Again

Once again this book has saved my life and my sanity. As mentioned in previous posts, Felicity was a great sleeper until the beginning of July when she got her first cold. And since then, things got progressively worse. Last week, it was to the point that she was waking up 4-6 times a night, and even getting her to go to sleep and stay asleep was sometimes a difficult ordeal.

For some reason, I had it in my mind that I needed to wait until she was 6 months old to go through the sleep training process in this book, so as I skimmed the chapters I needed to for a refresher and was looking for something that stated that. I guess my memory was faulty because it didn't state that anywhere that I could see, and I was desperate for a good night's sleep so we started the process on Sunday night (the 14th). I figured that if it didn't work because she was too young, I wasn't really out anything since I wasn't getting much sleep anyway.

The positive thing about the first night was that it only took Felicity about 15 minutes of crying and me going in a couple of times before she cried herself to sleep. The rough part of that night was that she woke up 4 times during the night and Bridget woke up 3 times (and yes, I was the one to deal with each of them each time). Bridget usually sleeps through the night or maybe gets up once to go to the bathroom, so I'm not sure if Felicity's crying disturbed her that much or if I was just that unfortunate. Needless to say, I was one VERY tired mom the next day.

During the day that day, things actually went really well for her naps. She didn't fuss for very long, and she actually took longer naps than usual. I was just grateful to be able to put her down awake instead of spending a ton of time rocking her to sleep only for her to wake up when I laid her down.

The second night, a miracle happened - she only fussed for a few minutes and then slept through the night for 9 hours straight! It was the best night's sleep I'd had in a LONG time. Maybe it helped that Nate slept on the couch downstairs so I got the whole bed to myself too! I felt like a new woman and actually woke feeling rested.

Since those first two nights, she's continued to sleep through the night for 9-10 hours. If she does wake, she cries for less than 5 minutes and goes back to sleep on her own.

So life is good at our house again. What's kind of ironic though is that now that Felicity is sleeping great, Bridget has decided to give up naps. I knew it was bound to happen soon since she is 3 1/2, but I was hoping it would last just a little longer. So now I'm just working on getting her to have some quiet time in her room in the afternoon.