Adventures in Sleep Training. AKA: Torture.

Traumatised, waiting the designated minute.
What else is there to do but document how I feel?

The Sargeant household is traumatised by our first evening's attempt at sleep training. I wish, right now, that I could just pop my little boy right back into my belly where he knows that everything he needs will be there on demand, where he is just all comfortable and warm, where he never has to struggle. My poor baby. This is without a doubt the most horrific thing I've experienced since having my little boy. And to know that we chose to do that to him? That it was a conscious decision we made? Ugh. I hope he will forgive me. Experiment over. .

I've always been opposed to sleep training, figuring that Ruben was waking for a legitimate reason, whether that be that he is hungry or just needs me to feel safe or just wants to sleep next to his Daddy... But something inside me cracked a few days ago, and I decided enough was enough. I think it was when he decided to stop eating so much in the day, and upped his milk consumption in the night. I know what you're thinking: Just feed him more in the day, right? When I give him a bottle, he pulls away and thrashes about in a fit until I take it away. He spits out any food I give him.

This is what happens lately when I give him food. No
matter what it is, it doesn't even make it into the mouth.

Now, in hindsight, I'm thinking there must be a reason for this. Maybe MORE teeth, yet again. Molars are next... maybe having anything in his mouth in this way is causing him pain. We should have just let him be, sat it out with him, comforted him through it. There are no adults I know that don't eat anything in the day and then get up every hour to eat throughout the night. It was surely going to end at some point.

So we tried the SleepEasy Solution. Amongst many other things, it discussed this problem and talked about night weaning, where you slowly lessen the amount in the bottles at night until they stop waking for it and learn not to rely on it. The big thing was to set an alarm in the night an hour before he would usually wake for a feed, and feed him before he wakes up for it. That was the plan. We didn't get that far.

We've never had a problem with Ruben going to bed. We have a very set bedtime routine that seems to work perfectly:
- Dinner

Bath time!

- Daddy comes home and they feed the fish and look at the cars
- We play five songs from play school while he sits in Duncan's lap
- Bath time (no idea what happens there... that's Dunc's thing)
- Pjs, sleeping bag
- Book (always 'Time for Bed') and bottle
- Lullabye and bed.
He is totally capable of falling asleep in his bed on his own at the beginning of the night, and for that I am thankful.

Here is what happened last night:
We put him to bed, as usual, with no problems at all. He had a smaller bottle than usual but fell asleep no problem. Yay! So far so good! And then about an hour and a half later he woke up. Cue plan. We had already put a bunch of dummies all around him so that he had the timer ready, the pen and paper, the book ready for go-to advice... this was going to work.

Writing things down minute for
minute at the 'sleep station'

We waited a minute and then went in. We spoke to him about what a beautiful boy he was and how much we loved him, how he was so big now and learning to sleep by himself, we consoled him, but didn't pick him up - I know that when I pick him up he falls to sleep, and the whole point was to get him to learn to do this on his own. For the next half hour, he would cry, then we'd go in, he'd cry some more, then he would be quiet for a minute or two and we'd think he'd done it. Then he'd cry again...

At some point, he did a little spit up from crying so hard. I had read about this in the book, and it says to just calmly say, 'Oh, Ruben, you had a little spew. It's okay, we'll clean you up.' That's what we did, and I held him until he was totally calm and relaxed. He started crying again as soon as I made any movement towards the bed, though, so I let him fall asleep in my arms (*gasp*). One minute later he was crying again and had done the most enormous spew I've ever seen.

All three of us were total wrecks, I was sobbing, Ruben was sobbing, Duncan was so angry at the people that wrote that book and made us believe it might work... It took around half an hour or forty-five minutes of me holding a spew-covered boy until he was simply breathing normally again. And then I had to put him down to get him changed and wipe him down... and the hysteria began again. Dear god it was all just so horrible!

So I am done. That's it for us. Experiment over. No more sleep training. Our little Bean has always been really sensitive, and now I have proof that he is a cuddler. I just want him to be happy, and if snuggling to sleep every night is the way to go, then so be it. What could be nicer in life than having the person you love most in the world cuddle you to sleep every night?

Oh how I love my little boy. Stay smiling, little one!