Sleep Training

Oh my, "Sleep Training", one of the things new parents fear the most.  You hear about all of these people who have children who sleep through the night once their child reaches the magical weight (14 lbs) or the magical age (6 months).  Then you hear about parents who did sleep training to help teach their child how to go to sleep by themselves; they say you need to do this so that they can learn to sooth themselves and so that they can learn a little independence.  You also hear that parents do this so their "child" will sleep better, when in reality, let's face it, it is so that the parents sleep better.

Every time I went in for a check up with my son the pediatrician would ask the same question, "How is your child sleeping"; and I always had the same answer, "he sleeps through the night but wakes up only to eat and then goes back to sleep".  Apparently that was not good enough, and was not considered "sleeping through the night".  There was a really rough week where our little guy would not go to sleep for anything, he fought and fought and fought going to sleep (while I would hold, and rock him, and sing to him).  After that hard week I convinced my husband we had to sleep train.  I had read a ridiculous amount of books, and had performed a ridiculous amount of research online; this mean I was ready, right? WRONG.  Sleep training went horrible when we tried it around 4.5 months.  Completely horrible!  I decided I would rather have a happy baby then spend 4 hours a day where we were both miserable.  Then came the dreaded 6 month appointment......tun tun tun.  Our pediatrician said "you need to let him cry it out".  I had feared this, I told her about our previous experience, but she stuck to it and told me "let him cry".  I then said, but he only sleeps on his tummy, he is a tummy sleeper; she said "that is fine, he can be on his tummy, let him cry".

I then spoke to a ridiculous number of mothers that had children around my sons age, and found out they had also sleep trained.....ugh I was still nervous.  I then found out about "The Wonder Weeks", (if you want more information on this look at my previous post).  I did some more research and thought, maybe there is a prime time to "sleep train" using wonder weeks.  I noticed that there was a period between 26.5 weeks and 28.5 weeks that seemed to not have a "fussy" period, or leap.  So I decided to use this time for sleep training......and miracle behold IT IS WORKING!  It has only been a few days, but it has been a miracle.

I was always skeptical about sleep training, and mind you if my husband had not told me to leave every time we had to put our son down, I don't know if I would have survived.  I also know that all children are different and have different needs.  If sleep training is not for you, I understand, I really do; who wants to deal with a child cry?  Or feel like you are abandoning them?  Or feel like they will never trust you again?  If you would like another opinion about another option to sleep training, check out this blog post, cosleeping .