On sleep

I definitely think finding a sleep routine that works is going to be different for every family, and every baby... so I've been hesitant to blog lest our friends (and parents!) be horrified by our choices or lest I make someone else feel like their own routines are being judged. But, still, sleep is a pretty big part of what a baby this age is doing, so I wanted to write about what worked for us, with the clear understanding that it will not be at all the same as what works for other people, and that is 100% totally okay!

We decided we needed to do something about our initial laid-back sleeping-whenever-wherever routine when Jolly started to fuss and wake when put down after falling asleep in our arms. Previously, the falling asleep and transfer to crib had worked great, but sometime around month 5 he started realizing when he was being put down... which was not so great for us, since it started taking several iterations of falling asleep on a parent before he finally went down for the night in his own crib. We began a more firm sleep ritual: story, swaddle, eat, trying very hard not to let Jolly fall asleep while eating, clean teeth, lullaby, crib. However, that alone wasn't really working to help him fall asleep or stay asleep on his own.

We'd read a variety of sleep books a while ago (before Jolly even arrived on the scene and in the months that followed) and had decided that the Ferber one was the most sensible to us. (This should not be a big surprise, because it has graphs and science, and we looove graphs and science.) And, we thought he was definitely old enough to be able to soothe himself by now.

So, we girded our loins and we did the gradual extinction crying once our houseguests were gone and neither one of us had major projects going on at work. First night there was a lot of rageful howling, with us going in to comfort him after 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes... and would have been another visit after 20 minutes except he fell asleep just beforehand, at the 45 minute mark. Second night there was still a lot of protesting, though it only took half an hour to fall asleep. Third night there was some, far more moderate protest, followed by sleep after 20 minutes. Fourth night there were no long stretches of protesting, just a bit of fussing that quickly gave way to sleep. Thereafter he's been consistently asleep before the 5 minute mark, and those few minutes are not filled with intense crying. New bedtime is around 9pm and he usually gets up for the day around 8-9 am, though he often wakes up earlier to eat and then immediately back to sleep.

Once this whole putting-down-awake, falling-asleep-on-his-own was firmly established for the nighttime sleeping, we've also employed it for naps. The naps are timed whenever Jolly starts to show signs of being tired (fussing not solved by eating, eye rubbing), and generally works out to 2-3 per day. He often cries just for the length of time that it takes for us to leave the room, and then hoots and coos to himself until he falls asleep.

All in all, the Ferber method gets an A from us. It was not as torturous listening to him be cranky in his crib as we thought it would be, and that stage was really surprisingly short lived. Jolly has really gotten the message that after the bedtime routine it's time for him to go to sleep on his own, and he does not seem excessively traumatized (nor are we). There's definitely still some momentary fussing, so I can definitely see how this method does not work for people for whom a crying baby is really hard to cope with, but it's really really short lived now, like a few minutes or less. It works well for us, at least with this child, and I would definitely do it again.