And now, for your daily sleep training update.... (Not working is kinda nice, so far this week I've cleaned half the house, been to Target, taken a nap, blogged daily...oh yeah, and RELAXED--just a bit though--and it's only Tuesday!).
Hannah resume catnapping yesterday afternoon so that was a real stinker (backward step #2) and bedtime was a nightmare (backward step #3). I THINK that since her afternoon napping was scarce and mostly nonexistent, she was overexhausted by bedtime and that caused the tears, but who knows. She never got too wound up or hysterical (forward step), but she alternated between self-soothing and crying for a full hour before dozing off. I didn't get a chance to eat beforehand (and wrongly assumed I'd be back down in no time since she only cried for 15 minutes the two nights before) so I was starving and found myself getting impatient when dadadaaaaa!!! It's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's Eric to the rescue!!! Whew. That was his first time doing the Sleep Lady Shuffle so that may have been part of the reason that Hannah kept up her crying for another half hour--she's used to him picking her up at the slightest whimper so I'm guessing she was testing his boundaries. It was a good thing to do during the day because I'll probably need him to shuffle in sometimes at night (when he has days off) and this will make it easier for both him and her.
As far as sleeping goes, she did pretty well. She made it from 8:30 to 5:00 a.m. Now, I prefer she sleep till 7:00/7:30, but baby steps, right? I got my grown-up time to watch reruns of House and I slept uninterrupted from about 10:30 to 5:00--not bad at all! Along with getting her bedtime crying down to ziltch, I'm trying to break her nighttime feeding habit, I followed the Sleep Lady's advice for doing this which is to resume shuffle position and do what I do every other time I put her down--coo at her and shush her and pat her on the butt--and surprisingly, it sorta worked. It worked in the sense that she didn't get all crazy and hysterical and go into melt-down mode, she actually started self-soothing and I thought to myself, YES!! I am AWESOME! But she never did go back to sleep so later I amended that statement slightly to: Okay, not bad Terri, not bad...What she ended up doing was rolling over onto her back which pretty much guarantees she's not going back to sleep especially with me standing there. By this point Eric had already gotten up and left for work so I figured it had to be after 6:00. I reached down for a pat and found her sleeper wet. Ohhhhh....bummer. She's taken to peeing clear out of her diapers and all over her belly. She was doing it with the disposables a couple weeks ago so we started using cloth full-time and that solved that problem until last night. So out of the crib with her and onto the changing diaper for a new diaper and new outfit. Wait--I think I'm mixing up the time--this diaper fiasco happened before Eric had even woken up. Okay, so I change her, hug her, and lay her back down and high five myself for following the program even though I'm exhausted and it would be WAY easier to just nurse her and go back to sleep. So I lay her down again and she's self-soothing and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be successful, and Eric gets up and is in the bathroom doing his morning thing and I'm still shushing and patting, and then I hear the door close and know that Eric is gone, and then I have to pee....So I take it to the next step of the weaning nightime feedings program: I leave the room and use the bathroom and count to 60 and then I swoop back in all chipper and stuff and sing Good Morning!! and scoop her up and open the blinds and turn off the fan and humidifier and go about our normal morning routine. (You're supposed to leave the room first so that there is a clear distinction between "I'm picking you up because you're crying" and "I'm picking you up because it's morning".) At this point I get access to a clock and see that it's 6:30 so we almost made it to our preferred wake-up time--not bad!! But most importantly, I stuck to my guns and to the routine, thus providing consistency and a clear message to my little banana.
So I'm gonna call that one step forward because for the first time, I followed the program rather than taking the easy way out. Celebratory drink anyone??? Kidding, kidding :)
Cheer, Cheers!
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