Sleep Training

We just completed week one of sleep training Henry. Let me tell you this is not for the faint of heart, but if you are desperate for sleep like I was/am then its worth it. Our sweet baby boy started sleeping through the night when I went back to work. He was 3 months old. I felt so blessed, but at the same time I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Ever heard of the 4 month sleep regression??? Well, we experienced it. Pretty much like clock work at 4 months Henry forgot how to sleep through the night. Horrible timing with going back to work and all. On a good night he was waking up 3 times. On a bad night, between 5 and 6. It was so terrible! I was getting on average around 4 hours of sleep. It was so hard to function during the day. I had been so proud of myself for giving up caffeine for 4 months. That came to a screeching halt. I was back on the "sauce" hard core. Anyway, enough about me. I'm not sure if it had something to do with Henry's horrible napping at daycare or what, but his night sleep majorly went down the tubes. I can't share Henry's personal sleep plan because we paid a sleep consultant to design it specifically for him, but I will tell you it involves a strict nap and feeding schedule as well as a controlled crying it out method. I was totally against cry it out before, but when I started only getting 4 hours of sleep that all changed. I will share the controlled crying method because anyone can Google that. When we put Henry down for his nap, he must be awake and he must stay in his crib for an allotted time regardless if he is crying or not. Once he starts crying we start the timer for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes if he's still crying then we go into his room briefly and replace his lovey and pacifier and then walk out. We repeat this every 15 minutes until he is asleep. The idea is that Henry is learning to self soothe and not to rely on others to put him to sleep. We are also giving Henry the opportunity to sleep. He has to stay in his crib for the time designated for each nap. He has three per day. I highly highly recommend introducing at lovey at 4 months by the way. Henry uses his to fall asleep for naps and at night. The point of this post is to more or less share with you that I am an advocate of sleep training and controlled crying it out. It is NOT easy. I hate listening to my sweet baby boy scream, but Zac and I decided that we didn't want him to rely on us or anything else to get him to sleep (we had previously been feeding him until he fell asleep). Clearly that was not working. Additionally, we firmly believe that you can teach your children to be better sleepers. I hope this sets the framework for Henry to be a good sleeper as he gets older. No guarantees though. There are always going to be road blocks and every child is different. What works for one will not always work for another. We are still having some major struggles with naps, but his night time sleep as improved greatly. He is sleeping around 12 hours every night. We put him down between 6 and 6:30 and he sleeps until 6:30am! He usually wakes up once to eat, but that's all and he goes right back down. I can handle once. We are hoping for continued success. I'm not trying to push my opinion onto anyone either. I just hope that if other parents are having sleepless nights that they seek out help or read the different methods that are out there. Sleep is so important for both parents and baby!