All Aboard the Sleep (Training)Train!

Overall, Jonah’s sleep had been pretty good over the past couple months.   Most nights he got a decent stretch of uninterrupted sleep in after bedtime (between 6-9 hours) with another small stretch (1-2 hours) after one night nursing session.  And we got about 3-4 hours of total naptime in each day. 

And then, at about 18 weeks, we heard it.  In the distance. A faint whistle and the sound of “chug-chug-chug”.  It was the sleep training train.  

I had read a few books and talked to a few friends.  I knew some of the terminology (“extinction”, “graduated extinction”, “controlled crying”) and a few of the major players (Dr. Ferber, Dr. Weissbluth) but I wasn’t really sure we needed sleep training.  But slowly I was reminded of a few issues we did have with Jonah’s sleep.  

(1) Short, irregular naps.  And I had been pretty inconsistent in how I put him down. Sometimes I’d bounce him to sleep and then lay him in the crib. Other times I’d side-lie nurse him in bed and we’d fall asleep together.  Sometimes he’d catch naps in the carseat or stroller.  And for the most part, naps only lasted 40-50 minutes.

(2) Increasing night waking. Starting around 4 months, Jonah began waking more frequently at night, up to four times (four month sleep regression?).  Unsure of what to do, sometimes Jake would bounce him, sometimes I’d go in and nurse him, sometimes we’d do both and often it seemed like nothing really worked to get him back into a deep solid stretch of sleep.

(3) Non-existent self-soothing. This was the big one, which became more obvious as Jonah started waking more at night.  Because we almost always put Jonah down for naps/nighttime all the way asleep (via bouncing, nursing, rocking), he had almost zero self-soothing experience, so any time he woke and didn’t have us around to re-create that soothing environment, he’d cry.   

And finally, after several nights of 4-5 wakings, extended periods of crying, a recommendation from our pediatrician and the encouragement of a few friends, we decided maybe it was time. The sleep train was boarding.  And this time we’d packed our bags and were waiting at the station.  (I can sense that this metaphor might be a little overdone at this point.  I’ll stop.)

Sleep training in the Salter House. Not pictured: Project Runway. 

So here’s the nitty gritty.

First, I looked into the claims that sleep training (specifically the “cry it out” method) had negative psychological effects on infants.  My instinct told me it couldn’t be that bad; he cried all the time in the car for extended periods without intervention, would eventually fall asleep and, upon waking, be his normal, happy self.  But I wanted to be sure.  Some digging showed that there is actually clinical  research on these techniques.  The verdict?  Turns out, sleep training isn’t just safe, it’s effective (when done properly).   For a good summary of the research, see: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/the_kids/2013/07/clinical_lactation_jumps_on_the_dr_sears_bandwagon_to_say_sleep_training.html  (I recognize that this topic is quite controversial.  But my goal here is simply to share our experiences, not to debate the pros/cons of sleep training.  Certainly what works for one child won't work for all children.) 

So, we re-read a few sections of sleep books I had purchased last month (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child; Babywise; Moms on Call), talked to our pediatrician (who recommended Ferber’s method of graduated extinction, i.e. “cry it out” with parental soothing at pre-set intervals), talked to a few parent friends and made a plan: We’d start Friday night (so that we’d have two weekend days to catch up on any lost sleep) and we’d go all in with the extinction method (which means you don’t go in to soothe or check on them until morning, letting them cry until they fall asleep).  We decided on the extinction method (over graduated extinction) because we read that, while harder on parents, extinction worked more dependably, more quickly, there was less overall crying and parents were more likely to return to the method after a sleep setback (illness, travel, etc).

Night One:

Friday evening we went to a birthday party got to hang out with some good friends and their sweet kiddos.  We headed home a little before Jonah’s normal bedtime (7:30/7:45pm) and stuffed our bags with a few leftover beers and chocolate chip cookies. To help blunt the agony of what was about to happen. 

Jonah was super calm and easy during the pre-bed routine.  Sweet and babbly and smilely as ever. He had no idea what was about to hit him. It was torture. As I rocked him and nursed him, anxiety started creeping in; I could feel my heart-rate increase, imagining endless hours of my baby screaming all alone in his crib.  But I knew, in the long run, this would be for his good.  I nursed him extra long while Jake read “The Jesus Storybook Bible” and prayed.  Then, at about 8:15 when he seemed to be done nursing, and had drowsy, heavy eyelids (but was still awake), I placed him in his crib.  We kissed his forehead, told him we loved him and that we’d see him soon.  It was so strange putting him down without the extended bouncing, hovering and tiny calculated movements to keep him asleep. 

The first 5 minutes he babbled to himself. It was so sweet. And I had a flash of optimism: “Maybe he won’t cry at all!  Maybe he’ll talk himself to sleep!” Ha. 

Then he started crying. Jake and I went downstairs, turned the monitor OFF, turned the fans ON (to muffle the crying) and folded laundry while watching TV to keep distracted.  We could hear the screaming (although dampened by white noise).  I kept imagining his little body, sweating and writhing in anger. His tears, hot on his sweet baby cheeks.  Ugh.  Would this actually work? Was he too hot?  Should we have swaddled him in a onesie instead of footie pajamas? Should we have waited another month?  I just kept rolling boxers, folding t-shirts and watching Tim Gunn encourage designers to “make it work!”.  Jake reached over to hold my hand. 

Slowly I became less bothered by the screaming and more interested in the show and then, by 9:00pm, we couldn’t hear him anymore.  We didn’t dare turn on the monitor.  We didn’t want to jinx it. We just both pretended to not notice while we finished Project Runway (which Jake generously offered to watch with me, for solidarity sake).  But, he was asleep. After only about 40 minutes of crying.

And we didn’t hear him again until 5:45am. He started fussing and we decided to wait it out for a little bit.  After about 10 minutes he was back asleep.   And finally I went to get him to feed at 7:00am.  He was awake and quietly playing.  What!??? This had NEVER happened. 

So night one was a pretty big success.

After Night One:

Subsequent nights started off with less crying (25 minutes on night 2, 10 minutes on night 3 and less than 2 minutes on night 4), but he also started waking earlier (5:30am!).  5:30 is a pretty early start to the day (we often lay him down for his first nap before 8:00am, which feels pretty weird since there were plenty of days prior to parenthood where we’d still be sleeping at 8:00am), but we still counted it a success.

Naps, on the other hand, were not so successful.  We initially tried to “rip the Band-Aid off”, so to speak, and nap train concurrently with night training.  We had a few successful naps (minimal crying and sleep lasting longer than 35 minutes) but we also had quite a few days where he would cry all the way through at least one nap, leaving us frustrated and him exhausted.   After some research and prayer we decided to put nap training on hold and try to establish a good nighttime sleep schedule, consistent wake up time and consistent nap schedule before nap training.

It’s been about three weeks since our initial CIO experience and nighttime sleep is still consistently better.  Sometimes I’ll “accidentally” nurse him to sleep (never wake a sleeping baby, right?) which sets us back a little bit on the self-soothing but I’d say we’re still fairly committed to the basics of sleep training.

The Verdict

So, in terms of our original sleep challenges, I’d say sleep training has helped moderately to significantly with #2 (night wakings) and #3 (self soothing) and not at all with #1 (short naps).  Those flippin’ 40-minute naps, man.  They’re killing me.