Sleep Bootcamp

Disclaimer: This post is rediculously long. Feel free to skip it if you want. (not that you needed my permission to read it or not)

Well, Madeline has been a pretty good sleeper since she was born. But, lately she has been getting a little worse. She has still been waking for a feeding in the night and sometimes she wakes up TWICE to eat. This has thrown off her schedule for the day so she doesn't eat well during the day. So, we decided that we needed to change that. Before, when she cried, I would give her her pacifier and she would usually fall back asleep or she would continue to cry and I would just feed her. But, since she is 5 months old and should have been sleeping through the night a long time ago, we decided to have "Sleep Bootcamp" this week. We have been reading Babywise since she was born. But, I guess we can't claim to be babywise parents until she is sleeping through the night. So, here is a "novel" about our bootcamp this week.

Monday: We started with Madeline's second nap. We put her down without her swaddler (she has been swaddled since she was born) and she fell asleep pretty quickly, about 1 minute of fussing. But, she woke up about 15 minutes later. I decided to let her cry herself back to sleep without giving her her pacifier. She cried for about 30 minutes while I dried my hair and turned up the music on the computer so I couldn't hear her. She eventually fell asleep flat on her face with the pacifier in her mouth. She then slept for another hour. Her next nap went great. She laid down and went to sleep pretty quickly for about an hour. That night, we gave her a bath, read her a book, fed her and had her in bed around 9:00. She fussed for a minute and then fell asleep. She slept until 12:30am and then woke up. This is the moment I had been dreading for a long time. I knew that it was best to teach her how to sleep through the night. But, it is hard to listen to your baby cry when you could just feed her and be back in bed in 20 minutes. So, we let her cry and she went back to sleep after about 30 minutes. Not, as bad or as long as I thought it would be. We shut her door and ours (and I tried to get Andrew to stuff tissue in his ears. But, he was too tired to get up and get the tissue.) so we could barely hear her. But, it was still slightly painful. :) I think I heard her a little later in the night. But, she didn't cry enough to really wake us up. So, she slept until about 7am.

Tuesday: She did great with her naps. She fussed for a few seconds when I laid her down and then she flipped over to her stomach and fell asleep with her face planted in the matress. That night, I tried to feed her before she went to sleep around 8, but she wasn't hungry from her last feeding around 6. So, I just put her down and she slept until 5am. I would have let her cry herself back to sleep but it had been 11 hours since she had eaten. So, I fed her and then put her back down. She slept until about 8am.

Wednesday: Naps went great. That night I tried to feed her again around 8pm before I laid her down and she wouldn't eat again since she had eaten at 6pm. So, I laid her down. She went to sleep, but woke up at 9pm. I decided to feed her so that she would sleep in a little longer in the morning instead of waking up to eat at 5am. She ended up sleeping until 8:30am. That's 11 1/2 hours. I think I may have heard her fuss a little through the night. But, not enough to really wake me up. Her little cries sound pretty pitiful now. She is really hoarse. I don't know if it is because she has been crying more than we think or if maybe she is a little sick. But, it is making it even harder to listen to her cry. Thankfully she isn't crying that much anymore.

Thursday: I laid her down to sleep around 8:30pm at our Bible Study Leader's house in their pack n' play. She was asleep in less than 5 minutes (once again, flat on her face). We put her in her car seat around 10pm and came home and put her in her bed. She gave a slight wimper, rolled over and fell back asleep. (Which I was very thankful for since we were missing the first part of LOST. :)) We heard Madeline wake up around 5am. I went in to check on her and she was trying to get her pacifier back in her mouth. So, I just shut her door and ours and I went back to sleep. I don't know how long she fussed. But, I don't think it was long because I probably would have heard her. So, she went back to sleep and woke up around 7:45 Friday morning. So, that was about 11 hours of sleep.

Friday: We seem to be on a better schedule now. I am leary of saying "this is her schedule now" because she always seems to change it as soon as I figure it out. And I can't always predict how long her naps will go. But they are usually between 1 1/2 -2 1/2 hours. But this is basically what we are doing:

8am eat and play

10am nap for about 2 hours

12pm eat and play

2pm nap for about 2 hours

4pm eat and play

6pm nap for 30-45 minutes

6:30pm wake up and play

8pm eat and bedtime

So, we made it to the end of our bootcamp week and I am still waiting for a "bad" night. I am sure there will be more sleepless nights due to teething and sickness. But, things are looking up. She is doing very well. I will always keep my moms advice in the back of my mind that she will probably try to test me every now and then and I just need to remind her that I am serious about her sleeping through the night (or whatever area we are trying to discipline her in). :) Well, we have a very happy daughter now and a very happy mommy!

I'm sorry this post is soooooooooo long. I am actually writing it down so that I can look back at it with our next child and remember that it really wasn't that bad and that we should do it much sooner with the next one.