This Weekend - Baby Sleep Bootcamp

Poor little guy - we Ferberized him this weekend.

But.

It worked AMAZINGLY! 

Like blow-my-mind amazingly.

And it was relatively painless too.

We never actually planned to cry-it-out with Zac (I mean, does anyone?).

But we were at the ends of our ropes with the whole sleep situation. We had been trying every other (more gentle) technique known to man to teach Zac how to fall asleep independently, but nothing was working. In fact, it just seemed to be getting worse. Sometimes he would cry in my arms for a whole hour and then fall asleep for a mere 30 minutes. It was exhausting!

And ever since Zac's fever last week, he went into a major sleep regression - it was bad enough already and then it got severely worse... like we honestly did not sleep last week.

So we decided enough was enough. It was time to sleep train.

So we put him to bed drowsy but awake and let him cry it out. 

Of course we went in to reassure him at 3, 5, and then 10 minute intervals. We poured ourselves big glasses of wine, turned the volume off on the video monitor (but still watched him on the screen), and then made guesses as to how long he would cry for before falling asleep.

I guessed 2 hours. Adrien bet that it wouldn't happen at all.

Well after a mere 35 minutes, he was fast asleep. 

And the next time it only took 13 minutes. Then 10 minutes.

This morning when Adrien put him down for his first nap it took a whole of 3 minutes to fall asleep... and NO CRYING!

And he's all smiles when he wakes up. He doesn't hate us. He isn't terrified of his crib like I read he would be. He doesn't seem in any way traumatized. 

In fact, he seems more secure and self-assured now.

He now knows how to fall asleep on his own. And that's a pretty fundamental human milestone to achieve, don't you think?

He seems pretty proud of himself, and we're pretty darn proud of him too.

I hope things continue to improve this way... 

at least until the next fever comes, or those lower central incisors that are looming below the gum-line decide to pierce through ; )