Sleep Training, Take Two

Sorry for the long break in posts. It's been hectic around here lately.

So, to catch you up, we decided to put sleep training on hold for a little bit after my last post. We were stressed out and it was emotionally draining. Plus, we were about to go on a trip to Jackson Hole and knew that any progress we made before the trip would almost assuredly be reversed by the change in routine.

About a week ago, we decided we were ready to try again. But this time, we started with just working on spacing out the time between middle of the night meals. I read the infamous book by Dr. Ferber and he suggested that we start with try to get the meals at least 2 hours apart and increase the time from there.

The plan was that if Joaquin woke up before 2 hours had passed since his last meal, only Jay would go in his room and soothe him back to sleep. If he woke up after 2 hours had passed, I would go in, feed him and put him back to bed.

The book suggested increasing the time between meals by one hour every night. We thought that was too harsh and decided we would increase in half hour increments each time Joaquin had successfully slept the allotted time between feedings.

We are now up to 4 hour increments and have been here for two nights. We were not successful last night (but very close). So, tonight we are still trying for four hours.

We also layered in the traditional Ferber method a few days ago (aka, crying). Unlike our first round of trying, we have been much more successful this time around. The first night he protested for almost 2 hours but on other nights it has been as short as ten or fifteen minutes. And, most importantly, he has been going right back to sleep without protest after his midnight meals. What a relief!

So, we are continuing with the training. We are happy we are doing it but it is definitely not easy on us.