Month 1 and 2- he got up every two hours.....which they say is normal for a newborn. But it sucked because he took almost an hour to eat then I had to re-swaddle him and rock him back to sleep. That left us with 1 hour to sleep until he would wake up again. I am a horrible sleeper and never fell asleep instantly even though I was EXHAUSTED! So our schedule for two months was sleep for an hour (I was getting maybe 45 mins since I didn't fall asleep right away) eat for an hour...every single night.
Month 3 and half of 4- I was gaining hope that he was actually going to sleep through the night soon! It kept getting better and better. He'd sleep for 3 hour stretches, then 4 hour, 5 etc. until he was finally going to bed around 6:30/7:00 waking up at 4:30 to eat and then sleeping until about 6:00. These were the best nights of my life!!
Well then he was 4.5 months old and "apparently" they go through a developmental stage or something goes on with their brain or something at this age and they say for the next couple weeks they will probably sleep worse than they normally do. So I was fine that he was getting up twice at night again instead of just once. I figured in a couple weeks it would end. WRONG! At this point he was eating two bottles at night. One around midnight and one around 4:30. After consulting with my sister Shayla on what she usually does with her kids at this stage I cut out the 4:30 feeding. Well this caused a ton of problems. (none of which was Shayla's fault...it just happened this way. I love Shayla's advice!) The first few nights he cried and cried when I didn't feed him at 4:30 but he got used to it pretty quick. BUT he now no longer got up at scheduled times i.e midnight and 4:30. Now he was getting up so sporadically. Sometimes 12:00 sometimes 3:00 then maybe the next night 1:45...you get the picture. Also he was getting up several times a night. All I had to do was go right in and put his soother in and he'd fall right back asleep...until next time. Well this was a horrible idea! He became so used to me putting his soosie in he was pretty much waking up just for that. I tried sleep training a little bit but not consistently around month 5.
Months 6 and 7- Were getting more ridiculous every night! Every now and again he would surprise me and only wake up 2 or 3 times and if I was REALLY lucky he would only get up once...these nights rarely happened though. By this point he was getting up almost every hour or two. And most of the time he just needed his soosie. He was only having 1 6oz bottle this whole time regardless of how many times he woke up. Around 6 months I tried sleep training with baby wise. Which helped his naps! Since he was about 2 months old his naps were only 20-30 mins long. And he seriously took 5 or 6 of those naps a day. Baby wise was a miracle worker and his naps became at least an hour sometimes 1.5 hours and on occasion 2 hours although that didn't really happen too often. And even though baby wise worked for naps...it did nothing with his night sleeping. The last week of month 7 we started sleep training FOR REAL this time though. And actually the week before that I started weaning him from his night time bottle so he started at 6oz and each night I gave him an oz less than the night before. I had finally just had enough after he had had a few REALLY rough nights where he still got up like 5 -8 times but one of those times he'd stay awake for like 2 hours...usually from 5-7 crying even if I went in like every 10-30 mins to put his soosie in.
Month 8- The night he turned 8 months old he SLEPT.THROUGH.THE.NIGHT!!!!!
This whole time I was very confused as to why he couldn't sooth himself at night. Because for months I had just been laying him down wide awake for naps and at night time and he always just either fell right asleep or talked for like 10 mins till he fell asleep. And during the day he could put his soother in 100% of the time by himself. My theory is that he 1. couldn't see his soosie because it was dark so he just didn't put it together in his mind that his soosie was right beside him. or 2. He just wanted ME to come in and put it in for him. Or maybe a little of both. And actually during the last month before I sleep trained him there were times at night where he would put himself back to sleep but others he would just cry and cry until I came to put his soosie in.
Through this 8 month ordeal I seriously read at least 5 or 6 books on sleep training and every single blog and article on pinterest and google! I tried 3 times to sleep train him and none of them worked. Finally I came across a book when I was perusing pinterest about how to sleep train your baby. The book is "The Sleep Easy Solution"
The gist of this book is: After 5 mins of crying you go stand in the middle of the room. DO NOT touch your baby at all. You say something like "Mommy's here, I love you. It's okay to go to sleep. I'll come check on you again in a few minutes." and then you leave. If they keep crying you do the same thing but wait 10 minutes this time. Then every time after that is 15 minutes. If they aren't "hard" crying- you don't go in. If they are crying intermittently- you don't go in. This was hard for me because I knew he just needed his soother but I couldn't go give it to him. I put 6 soothers in his crib hoping he could find one.
Night 1: He got up 4 times but 3 of those times he put himself back to sleep. But it was the 3:30 waking that caused the problem. He cried for 2 hours. The first hour was just kinda whining and light crying on and off. So I didn't go in. The beginning of the second hour after 5 minutes of hard crying I went in, stood in the middle of his room and said my little pep talk then left. Well this made him pretty mad and he started screaming harder. But he would never cry for the whole 10 minutes so I could never go in and comfort him again. He would cry for like 7-9 mins then stop for a couple of seconds then start screaming again. So even though it was ALMOST 10 mins the books said not to go in. AHH this sucked! Finally after like half hour of this screaming for almost 10 mins then stopping then starting again I just went in anyways...which was probably a mistake because he started screaming even louder since he saw me and I didn't come and put his soosie in. He did fall asleep after the 2 hours and woke up around 7.
Night 2: He only woke up 3 times and once again it was the time around 3:30 where he screamed...for 2 hours. Out of all the books and articles and blogs I read, EVERY.SINGLE.ONE of them said the baby will cry less and less each night. Ya, not Roczen. (Stubborn little thing!) So tonight was pretty much the same thing. First hour was just whining and light crying. Second hour was screaming off and on and never long enough for me to go in. But don't get me wrong...when he stopped screaming it was only for a couple seconds so it was pretty much an hour straight of screaming. This night I didn't go in at all. Same thing tonight, he fell asleep after the 2 hours and woke up around 7.
Night 3: Only woke up 1 time. At 4:00 and screamed for...you guessed it...2 hours! This night I did go in twice which of course just made him madder. So by this night I've realized it really makes him mad when I go in because he sees me but I don't do anything to comfort him besides talk to him. Once again after the 2 hours he fell asleep and this night since he fell back to sleep later than the other two nights he slept until 7:45.
Night 4: He woke up once around 3:30 and yup, he screamed for 2 hours. All the books said the first night was the hardest. Night 4 was the hardest for me. Night 1 I had a purpose. I told myself it was going to be the hardest night and it would get better from there. I expected it to be hard. However I hadn't prepared myself for night 4 to be HARD. I had told myself by this night he would prob only be crying for 30 mins or less. So I didn't expect him to cry for 2 hours still. And this night he screamed the hardest of all the nights and it broke my heart! I cheated on this night. I went in, grabbed one of his soosies and put it in his hand...which was clenched so he didn't grab the soosie so I just put it in for him. He was still too mad though and ended up spitting it out and crying again. But once again he did fall asleep after the 2 hours.
Night 5: I was DONE. I was giving up. My child was hopeless. I was just never going to sleep through the night again. I didn't feel right letting him scream for 2 hours anymore. But lo and behold- HE SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT. I heard him make a noise at 5:30 for like 1 second and then he slept until 7:20
Night 6,7 and 8- He is still sleeping through the night! He wakes up still 1-3 times but every time he either makes like one noise and is right back asleep or else he angry talks (which sounds hilarious by the way) for 1-2 mins then is asleep. He is, however, waking up at like 6 or 6:30 now. But I can usually leave him in his crib until 7 and he either talks or kinda half cries half whines. And he was usually getting up around 7 or 7:15 before when he was waking up like 4-8 times a night. So I would say this is MUCH better.
As for naps, he still takes 3 a day. All of them range from 1-1.5 hours long. And occasionally he will change it up and have a 30-45 min nap but I'm not too put out by that because hey, he's sleeping through the night!!
Those 4 nights were absolutely horrible and on night 4 I laid there on the couch crying with him the whole 2 hours pretty much. BUT it was worth it because now he can put himself to sleep without any help from me! The one downside which I was warned about in a couple books was that once babies sleep through the night they sometimes become more clingy during the day. Their reasoning for this is that they have more energy from sleeping all night that they can now focus on building their relationships during the day. That may be part of it but I mostly think it's because he doesn't get to see me 23094873209487 times a night now so he needs me more during the day because he misses me haha I've definitely noticed him being more clingy. He's still a VERY happy baby and very content but he does need me more which is okay because it is my job after all to play and be with him all day haha
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