Sleep training one week later...it's been quite a week for Maverick and I with its ups and downs but overall there has been amazing progress by my little man. We decided to sleep train nights as well as naps to be consistent. The first night was by far his hardest to go down but he had barely napped that day so I knew he was extremely overtired but within 20 minutes he had put himself to sleep. Since that first night after a bath, a book, a feeding, and a lullaby, Maverick has been falling asleep on his own in his crib unswaddled, without a paci and without me sitting next to the crib. I'm a very proud mama! That showed me that he can fall asleep on his own and soothe himself. We have also had fewer night wakings. And when we have had them, and he wasn't due for a feeding, we have let him cry and he has put himself back to sleep. It's extremely tough to hear him cry in the middle of the night and not run to him but what led us to this sleep training is that my trying to soothe him seemed to often make things worse. He has needed to learn to do it on his own. We still have a ways to go before he's sleeping through the night and sleeping to a consistent time in the morning but we've seen progress and that's all we can ask.
Naps have been a little more of a struggle. We have a mini nap routine that includes a diaper change, book and lullaby. His first nap of the day tends to be his best and happens sometime around 8:30am depending on when he woke up. He usually goes down alright for this nap and sleeps around one to one and a half hours (yesterday we actually had a two hour morning nap without any wakings! Amazing!). If he does have a waking during his nap (which often happens at either the 30 or 45 minute mark) I give him until the end of the hour from when he went to sleep to try and fall back asleep. Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't particularly as the day progresses. His second nap occurs two hours after he wakes up from his first so usually sometime between 11:30am and 12:30pm. The second nap lasts anywhere from 40 minutes to one hour and 20 minutes. Some days he has a little trouble falling asleep for this one but it hasn't been too bad.
His third nap of the day is the one we're still trying to figure out. I've tried putting him down two hours after waking from his second and he has cried anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour (I won't let him cry any longer than that and it is brutal). I've tried a little earlier than two hours and I've even tried stretching it to a little past two hours. The only ways I've really been able to get him to take a third nap is in the stroller (like in the pic at the top of the post from our late afternoon walk today) or a car ride. If we can somehow consistently get his other two naps to be a little longer than I think he'd be good to drop that third nap but right now naps are still a little all over the place with length, which then effects the time but we will keep trying and I know he'll get it!
It has been miserable the times I've had to hear my son cry this week (and it's called for several glasses of wine!) but as my husband continues to remind me, we are teaching him how to sleep and soothe himself and that is so important for him to learn. I'm there with so many smiles and kisses every time I go into his room to get him and overall he has been a much happier baby.
Now onto week two as the journey continues!
Xoxo,The Baltimore Blonde :)